2Pac and Snoop Dogg are two of hip-hop’s most beloved MCs. Rising to prominence by the side of Dr. Dre on Death Row Records, both artists dominated the 1990s, and with Dre’s ingenious churned-out G-funk classics that are still relevant to this day.
For rap music enthusiasts, it would be hard to imagine a time when 2Pac and Snoop didn’t know each other. In the 1990s, they were joined at the hip and seemed utterly inseparable.
Both artists worked alongside each other during the 1990s on Death Row Records and with Dre’s ingenious churned-out G-funk classics. Whether it’s All Eyez On Me or Doggstyle, both artists are legendary.
However, in 1996, 2Pac got murdered in a drive-by shooting after a scuffle at the MGM Grand Casino in Las Vegas. Before this, Shakur and Snoop Dogg were always seen as a pair, but after the ‘California Love’ icon was murdered in 1996, the dynamic duo were no longer.
However, before 2Pac’s death, Snoop Dogg had a rocky relationship with his Death Row counterparts. While in New York, Snoop (real name Calvin Broadus) had a radio interview with Angie Martinez during which he said he had love for Biggie Smalls and would love to do a song with him. At the height of the feud between Biggie and 2Pac, this did not go down well.
That said, in 2019, during an appearance on Angie Martinez’s Untold Stories of Hip Hop, Broadus detailed the 1996 plane journey home from New York to Los Angeles and revealed he feared for his life and thought Suge Knight was going to kill him.
Speaking about the aftermath of his 1996 interview in which he praised Biggie Smalls, Broadus told Martinez, “Death Row looked at me like a traitor. The next day, I actually had to fly back home from New York, and normally, on a private plane, it would be 2Pac and his security, me and my security, Suge and a couple of his homies.”
He continued, “This time, I go to the airport, and my security is walking with me, but Suge like, ‘Hold up, they can’t roll. They got to catch a regular flight!’ So now I’m like, ‘Okay’.”
“First of all, Pac ain’t said nothing to me though from that moment on,” he continued, “I seen shit happen. I know how this n*gga get down. I know how he gets down. I’m not a stranger to danger; I know what it is so now I get on the plane.”
Unveiling how he tried to protect himself after getting rejected by 2Pac, Snoop detailed, “So I walked to the back of the plane, get me a blanket grab me a knife and fork put the blanket over my nose, I put my black glasses and ride like this the whole flight hoping one of them n*ggas come f*ck with me so I can stab everybody on this muthaf*cka! This is a five-and-a-half-hour flight. Not nobody say one word to me. Not one word.”
Broadus confirmed after that flight, at LAX, was the last time he ever saw 2Pac alive. You can watch a snippet of Snoop Dogg’s Untold Stories of Hip Hop interview below.
