On this day in Hip Hop Tupac Shakur headed into the building on 7th Avenue in Manhattan, where the Quad Recording Studios reside. With manager Freddie Moore and Randy “Stretch” Walker of the Live Squad, Pac approached the elevator, where three gunmen demanded their money and jewelry. Moore and Walker obeyed, but ‘Pac cursed at them, which resulted in Pac being shot five times and robbed of $40K worth of jewelry.
Shakur, suspected Lil’ Cease, who called ‘Pac from the 8th-floor window before he was shot, Diddy and the late Notorious B.I.G. for the robbery, however, that was denied by Cease, Diddy, and B.I.G. No proof has ever surfaced, and others have been suspected, but after the shooting, the relationship between the East Coast and West Coast Hip Hop was never the same again.
Pac would go to jail for rape, Bad Boy Records would rise, the east would shine at the source awards, and Pac would get bailed out by Death Row and send the East Coast/West Coast rivalry into a full out war.
In the end it took the loss of both Biggie and Pac for the beef to be squashed from both sides, but many look back on this day in 1994 as the shot that started the war.