“This was me and Tupac’s first conversation. This was October 18th 1995. i had just gotten out of Pelican a month before, and Pac had been out a couple of days. We did not know We were being recorded. My wife pressed record on the answering machine and unbeknown to either of us, caught some bomb ass history. Ya’ll enjoy this, and check out Pac and how positive he was. This is Classic shit. It’s Shakur thang.” – Sanyika “Monster Kody” Shakur
Friendship with Tupac Shakur and the Vibe Magazine Interviews.
In the early 1990s Kody, now calling himself Sanyika Shakur, met rapper Tupac Shakur (no blood relation, but same revolutionary family). The two immediately became good friends and Kody mentioned Tupac in the introduction to his book. In 1996, as Kody was on the run from police for a parole violation, he met up with Tupac on the set of the x-rated version of Tupac’s music video “How Do U Want It”. This would be the last time that Kody would ever see Tupac.
On September 13, 1996 Tupac Shakur died after being shot in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada seven days earlier, allegedly by members of the South Side Compton Crips. Kody would later interview Tupac’s alleged murderer, Orlando Anderson, for a December 1997 Vibe Magazine article about Tupac’s murder, in which Anderson denied being involved in the rapper’s murder.
After being captured by police, Kody was sent to Pelican Bay State Prison, where he spoke with Death Row Records CEO Suge Knight, who was also incarcerated at Pelican Bay for a parole violation stemming from his participation in the assault on Anderson. According to the Vibe Magazine article, Kody, upon hearing that Tupac had been shot, initially suspected that Suge Knight had set him up because Tupac was planning to leave Death Row Records to start his own record label.
In the article Kody stated that he was incredulous after hearing Knight’s claim that Tupac died owing him money despite selling over $60 million USD worth of albums for Death Row Records, and that he knew that all of Tupac’s possessions, including his home and his cars, were in Knight’s name. At the end of the interview Knight told Kody that Orlando Anderson was indeed the person who killed Tupac. Orlando Anderson was killed on May 29, 1998 in an unrelated shooting.