On This Day 30 Years Ago, Hip-Hop Lost One of the Greatest Rappers of All Time After Horrific Drive-by Shooting - VICE
Hip-hop was never the same after Tupac Shakur died. No rapper was as fiery, righteous, or charismatic as him, packing a legendary career in just five years. But on this day 30 years ago, he finally passed away six days after being shot in a drive-by shooting. We still don’t know who pulled the trigger decades later. However, after decades of being left in the dark, someone was finally arrested for his murder.
On August 31, 2026, Duane “Keffe D” Davis was found guilty of the first-degree murder of Tupac Shakur. Prosecutors found him to be the mastermind behind the operation, calling him a “shot caller” in the South Side Compton Crips. Judge Carli Kierney is slated to sentence Davis for his role in the murder on October 13th. He could potentially face the rest of his life in prison if convicted.
Despite everything, Davis maintains his innocence. In an interview with Jeff Weiss for The Hollywood Reporter, he said that, regardless of the sentencing, he’s already working to get out. “S**t, I ain’t worried. I’m getting out on an appeal,” Keffe D told Weiss. “We already filed it before the trial even started. They violated my civil rights!”
Death was almost always on Tupac’s mind throughout his life. In many of his songs, he would be paranoid about his life coming to an abrupt end at any moment. After being shot five times in 1994 in New York, this feeling grew even further.
In one of his saddest interviews in 1994, Tupac felt like he was cursed by God himself. “If I can’t live free, if I can’t live with the same respect as the next man, I don’t want to be here. God has cursed me to see what life should be like,” he told Ed Gordon. “If God wanted me to be this person and be happy here, he wouldn’t let me feel so oppressed. He wouldn’t let me feel so trampled on. He wouldn’t let me think the things I think.”
Despite that dark feeling, Tupac felt like it was his responsibility to look out for future generations. He argued that he was merely carrying out “God’s work” with his voice. “I feel like I’m doing God’s work. Just because I don’t have nothing to pass around for people to put money in a bucket don’t mean I ain’t doing God’s work. These ghetto kids ain’t God’s children and I don’t see no missionaries coming through there,” he continued.
