Was Daz Dillinger jealous of 2Pac?
The West Coast hip-hop scene of LA was united in the 1990s, and during the height of the G-Funk revolution, the entire coast was behind 2Pac and his Death Row label. However, since the legend’s unfortunate demise in 1996, one rumour has lingered, implying that his friend and longtime collaborator Daz Dillinger was jealous of him.
One infamous figure who regularly states the rumour as fact is Suge Knight. The former owner of Death Row and businessman frequently suggests that Daz Dillinger was envious of his friend during their tenure as labelmates and was always “plotting” against Shakur prior to his death.
Although not many people take Suge Knight’s wild ramblings seriously, over the years, his slander and character-defaming claims have gotten under the skin of Dillinger. Following the release of a podcast in which he was mentioned, the rapper took to social media to address Suge Knight and the false accusation that he was “jealous” of 2Pac.
During a video, Daz Dillinger explained how Death Row was a team and insisted that artists and producers alike all helped each other create magic. This is because the claim of 2Pac envy has been thrown at Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg, and others.
The Long Beach native argued that everybody as a group helped 2Pac to become a star and wasn’t focused or envious of him but instead happy for him. Dillinger expressed his anger at Knight’s intentional deception of fans, stating, “Yo, I got a problem with this! People always saying that Snoop. Dr Dre, us, everybody — we was jealous of 2Pac!”
He continued, “How can we be jealous of 2Pac, and we made 2Pac?” Every figure he created contributed to the late emcee’s success, from production to guest appearances and more.
Detailing everything they had done for 2Pac, Dillinger continued, “We put that album [All Eyez On Me] together! We came over there. We gave him music. We did that. We wanted him to be the man of the man, so how was we jealous putting his album together? Taking songs from us and giving it to him — how is that jealousy?”
Daz then turned to Suge Knight and aimed at him, pointing to Knight’s Collect Call podcast as a tool to stunt people out of envy. Highlighting this, Dillinger insisted, “The only jealousy there was Suge Knight in his ear and everybody[‘s] ear causing confusion. Look at that muthaf**ka now. All on his little podcast always talking sh*t. Kill that noise! Tha Dogg Pound, Snoop Dogg, Dr Dre, none of us — we was never jealous of 2Pac.”
Although Knight has made various claims about the figures at Death Row, many, including Daz Dillinger, no longer pay attention to what began as a podcast of false revelations.