JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
In Las Vegas, a fatal drive-by shooting that happened almost 30 years ago is finally the subject of a murder trial. It's international news because the victim was Tupac, the hip-hop star Tupac Shakur, who became a broader cultural icon after his death. And in the 30 years since he was killed, nobody has ever been tried in connection with his death until now. A few years back, the Slate podcast "Slow Burn" took a close look at the killings of Tupac and Biggie, The Notorious B.I.G. Joel Anderson hosted that season of "Slow Burn," and we've called him up to talk about it. Hi there.
JOEL ANDERSON: Hey. Thanks for having me.
SUMMERS: Thanks for being here. OK, Joel, so the man being tried for murder, Duane Davis, also known as Keffe D, has given public interviews. He's even written a book detailing his involvement in what happened that night. He has also pleaded not guilty. Has anything from this trial surprised you so far?
ANDERSON: Not really - it's gone pretty much according to form 'cause everybody has called their shots. The strategy is not a complicated one from prosecutors. They're going to say, hey, look, this guy has confessed over and over again. He wrote about it when he was first interviewed by, you know, local law enforcement about it in 2008. He said the same thing then. And then after his book was published in 2019, he gave a series of interviews where he said that - gave basically the same version of events. With Keffe D's attorney - and I hope I can call him Keffe D instead of Davis (laughter)...
SUMMERS: Yeah.
ANDERSON: ...Is that he's a liar and that he's lying about all this 'cause he wanted some of the street cred, but also because he is a former drug dealer. It's not like he has many other professional means to make money. So this is basically a means to keep his name in the public square and make a little money while he's doing it.
SUMMERS: Now, when you were hosting that season of "Slow Burn," did you ever expect it would lead to charges against Davis or any of the three folks who he said were with him?
ANDERSON: No, because the - my thought was that, well, if it hadn't happened already, why would it - why would things change, right? And even people that worked on the case, particularly Detective Greg Kading, formerly of the LAPD, who was, you know, one of the people that led the - and got the confession from Keffe D and led that initial investigation, said, oh, there'll never be any closure. But what happened is that Keffe D, he moved to Nevada. Well, that's where they have the legal jurisdiction to charge him, and he kept talking. And one thing about it is that that county, they got a new sheriff, and people were like, hey, this guy's sitting out here admitting that he did this murder and talking it up. And it was embarrassing. And so eventually, people his - called him on it and brought him in and charged him.
SUMMERS: I mean, look, if this trial had happened back in the '90s, it likely would have been much bigger news because of how big Tupac was at the time. Just put it into words for us. How big was he?
ANDERSON: Oh, I mean, Tupac was a movie star. He dated Madonna. He, you know, was one of the - before he went into prison, he was a pretty good rapper with a pretty good following. When he got out of prison for - he went to prison for sexual abuse charges in 1994. When he came out, he was a huge platinum-selling artist. He became probably one of the two or three most famous rappers in the world. And so for him to have just gotten gunned down on a night when everybody was in Vegas - he was at a Mike Tyson fight. Those used to be some of the biggest sporting events in America.
SUMMERS: Yeah.
ANDERSON: And nobody ever be brought to justice?
SUMMERS: Yeah.
ANDERSON: And so the idea that somebody may - is on trial for this is pretty amazing.
SUMMERS: I mean, it's really hard to tell the story of Tupac without talking about Biggie. What's the best way to think about their rivalry in 2026?
ANDERSON: Wow, that's a good question. Well, I mean, they were friends, right? This all started out with Tupac helping Biggie's career. Tupac felt betrayed by Biggie when Tupac got shot at a New York recording studio during that same sexual abuse trial, and ever since then, they'd fallen apart. And, you know, they never reconciled before Tupac was killed in '96, and then Biggie was killed in '97. And the one thing I think about is that it really cast a pall over hip-hop for a number of years. But the idea that your two biggest stars in the game or two of the three biggest stars would, you know, meet their demise within a year of each other because of, you know, getting involved in gang violence and all these other sort of musical beefs, that would seem absurd today - both of them dying as a result of their beef. That's basically what it was like if you were there in 1996.
SUMMERS: That's Joel Anderson. He's a staff writer at The Ringer and was host of "Slow Burn," the third season that looked into the killing of Tupac and Biggie. Joel, thanks.
ANDERSON: Oh, thanks for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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