Trial for Suspect in 1996 Killing of Tupac Shakur Begins Aug. 10

​Duane "Keffe D" Davis, shown in this booking photograph provided by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Davis is scheduled to stand trial starting Aug. 10, 2026, on murder charges in connection with the 1996 killing of rapper Tupac Shakur.

For nearly three decades, the Sept. 7, 1996, drive-by shooting of Tupac Shakur has stood as hip-hop'smost notorious unsolved murder. On Monday, that officially changes.

​Jury selection and trial proceedings are scheduled to begin Aug. 10 in Las Vegas for Duane "Keffe D" Davis, the 63-year-old former gang leader accused of orchestrating the ambush that claimed the life of the 25-year-old rap icon.

​The trial represents a surreal collision of past and present. Shakur was killed at the absolute peak of his commercial power, riding the massive success of Death Row Records' "All Eyez on Me." His death — followed six months later by the murder of Christopher "The Notorious B.I.G." Wallace in Los Angeles — effectively ended the East Coast-West Coast rivalry that defined 1990s hip-hop, leaving generations of fans without legal closure.

​Davis faces a single count of murder with a deadly weapon with the intent to promote, further or assist a criminal gang. He has pleaded not guilty and has remained jailed since his arrest in late 2023.

​Prosecutors are not attempting to prove that Davis pulled the trigger. Instead, they allege he was the shot-caller who provided the firearm and directed the hit from the passenger seat of the infamous white Cadillac that pulled alongside Suge Knight’s black BMW at a red light near the Las Vegas Strip. Knight survived the shooting with minor injuries; Shakur died six days later.

​According to grand jury transcripts, prosecutors maintain the shooting was direct retaliation. Hours earlier, Shakur, Knight and their Death Row entourage were seen on casino surveillance footage beating Davis' nephew, Orlando "Baby Lane" Anderson, following a Mike Tyson fight at the MGM Grand. Authorities have long characterized the violence as a tragic extension of a feud between the Mob Piru Bloods, associated with Death Row Records, and the South Side Compton Crips, tied to Davis and aligned with Bad Boy Records.

​The case famously sat cold for decades. It was ultimately revived by Davis himself.

​In recent years, Davis began giving high-profile interviews and published a 2019 tell-all memoir, "Compton Street Legend," openly detailing his presence in the Cadillac and his role as a South Side Compton Crips leader. Prosecutors have bluntly stated that if Davis had not written explicitly about the killing or spoken about it on camera, no one would have likely ever been charged.

​Davis' defense team plans to argue that the state is relying on unreliable witnesses due to the sheer amount of time elapsed since 1996. The defense has also suggested Davis' public confessions were fabricated for entertainment value and financial gain, attempting to capitalize on the enduring mythology surrounding Shakur's death.

​With a reported witness list of more than 200 names — including Knight, who is currently serving a 28-year prison sentence in California for an unrelated fatal hit-and-run — the Las Vegas proceedings are expected to draw massive international media scrutiny.

​Nearly 30 years after the Vegas strip went dark for one of music's brightest stars, the culture is finally going to court.

Chris Brown And Usher’s Stadium Run Gives R&B Its Box-Office Rebuttal

Chris Brown, left, and Usher are shown in artwork for “The R&B Tour.” The co-headlining stadium run has topped $100 million in reported grosses from its first eight stadiums, according to Pollstar. (Courtesy photo)

Usher said R&B belonged in stadiums.

Eight reported stadiums into the co-headlining run, the box office is doing the talking.

Chris Brown and Usher have already topped $100 million in reported grosses on “The R&B Tour,” according to Pollstar, giving the Live Nation-produced run the kind of early number that turns a genre argument into a business story.

Pollstar reported Monday that the tour has grossed $101.9 million from its first eight stadiums, based on 566,043 tickets sold across the first 13 sold-out concerts. The tour opened June 26 at Empower Field at Mile High in Denver and has moved through stadiums in Minneapolis; Detroit; Cleveland; Landover, Maryland; Charlotte, North Carolina; St. Louis; and Nashville, Tennessee.

That is not R&B asking to be taken seriously after years of “R&B is dead” talk.

That is R&B counting the money.

The numbers land a month after Usher framed the tour as something bigger than two stars sharing a stage. Speaking to The Associated Press before the opener, he said R&B has spent years feeding popular music without always getting equal respect from the live business.

“It deserves to be in a stadium,” Usher told AP. “It is not just for theaters. It is not just for arenas. We do this … too. We are major too. R&B is major too.”

He was right.

Pollstar said Brown and Usher averaged $7.8 million per concert, enough to debut at No. 1 on the trade publication’s Global Concert Pulse chart. The tour also ranked No. 2 on LIVE75 by average tickets sold per show among concerts counted in the chart’s eligibility window, behind Bad Bunny.

That makes “The R&B Tour” one of the clearest live-music stories of the summer: R&B, especially the 2000s version built on choreography, club records, slow jams and heavy radio memory, still moves at stadium scale.

That should not surprise anyone who has been watching the receipts.

Usher is coming off a run that included the Super Bowl halftime show, a major Las Vegas residency and the “Past, Present, Future” tour, which Live Nation said sold more than 1.1 million tickets in North America. Brown entered the tour after “Breezy Bowl XX,” which Live Nation said grossed nearly $300 million and drew 2 million fans across stadiums in North America, Europe and the United Kingdom.

Put together, they are not proving that either man has fans.

They are proving how many of those fans are still willing to gather in the same building.

That matters for a genre that has too often been treated like mood music when it was really infrastructure. R&B helped build the sound of pop radio, hip-hop hooks, dance floors, wedding receptions, BET countdowns, car rides, cookouts and the private emotional lives of people who may not call themselves R&B heads until the right record comes on.

The tour is turning that memory into stadium math, despite some heavy baggage.

Brown’s commercial power has never erased the record that follows him. He pleaded guilty in 2009 to felony assault for attacking then-girlfriend Rihanna. AP also reported that he pleaded not guilty in 2025 in London to charges tied to an alleged 2023 nightclub assault.

Usher told AP that Brown’s criticism and legal troubles did not factor into his decision to tour with him.

“Absolutely not,” Usher said. “He’s my brother, and he’s amazing as a performer. That’s who I see. He works hard for his fans, and his fans support him.”

“The R&B Tour” is a win for the genre’s live-business case. It is also a reminder that the live business does not always move on the same clock as the public conversation. Fans buy tickets for songs, memories, dancing, vocals, choreography and the feeling that a certain era of music still belongs to them. Promoters count demand. Venues count nights. The rest of the argument follows the crowd into the parking lot.

None of that makes the number less real.

Pollstar said the tour is scheduled to continue through Dec. 12 in Tampa, Florida, with 51 shows at 26 stadiums in the United States and Canada. Sixteen venues are booked for more than one show. Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium is scheduled for four.

If the early average holds, Pollstar said the tour could finish in the $400 million range, with more than 2 million tickets sold.

That would not just be a big R&B tour.

It would be one of the year’s biggest tours, period.

The genre did not suddenly get bigger.

The rooms finally did.

Too $hort Tests Hip-Hop’s Age Limit With New Lil Jon-Produced Album

Too $hort performs at iThink Financial Amphitheater in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 13, 2023. The Oakland rap pioneer is releasing “Sir Too $hort Vol. 2: Drink & Smoke,” his 23rd studio album, with Lil Jon producing the project 20 years after “Blow the Whistle.” (Rick Munroe/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Too $hort has reached the age where other genres would already call him an elder, hand him a lifetime achievement award and let him keep working.


Hip-hop has not always been that generous.

The Oakland rap pioneer is 60 now, still recording, still performing and still talking like nobody told him he was supposed to disappear. His new album, “Sir Too $hort Vol. 2: Drink & Smoke,” his 23rd studio album, arrives Friday with Lil Jon producing the entire project — a full-circle pairing landing 20 years after “Blow the Whistle” became one of the most durable records in Short Dog’s catalog.

The timing gives the release more weight than another veteran-rapper rollout.

Too $hort is not just promoting an album. He is making a case for rap’s older generation to keep taking up space.

“Who laid the rule down that in hip-hop you gotta stop at 40?” Too $hort told The Associated Press in an interview published Thursday.

That question sits at the center of the story.

For decades, rap treated age differently than jazz, blues, soul or rock. Older singers could tour forever. Blues players could get grayer and more respected. Funk bands could become institutions. But rappers were often expected to either become executives, nostalgia acts or punch lines once they crossed a certain line.

Too $hort never accepted that rule.

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He started moving homemade tapes around the Bay Area as a teenager, built himself into one of Oakland’s defining rap voices and helped make West Coast street rap feel self-contained before the industry fully understood what was happening outside New York. His records could be filthy, funny, blunt, slick and sometimes socially pointed, often in the same stretch of music.

That is part of why his catalog lasted.

“The Ghetto” still carries its quiet weight. “Freaky Tales” remains one of the most infamous long-form talk-your-talk records in rap history. “Blow the Whistle” found another life far beyond radio, turning into an arena chant, a DJ weapon and a song that still cuts through a room before the first verse gets there.

Too $hort told AP he does not know if he could recreate the formula for “Blow the Whistle” if someone handed him the ingredients.

“It had to happen organically,” he said.

He gave Lil Jon credit for that record’s staying power, and the two are back together on “Sir Too $hort Vol. 2: Drink & Smoke.” The album also carries a more personal layer. It features work from Lil Jon’s late son, DJ Young Slade, who died in February after contributing to the project.

Too $hort told AP he was proud to be part of Slade’s legacy.

That detail keeps the project from reading like a simple party-rap victory lap. Yes, the title is “Drink & Smoke.” Yes, Too $hort is still Too $hort. Nobody is coming to this record expecting him to suddenly become careful. But the story around it is about age, grief, work and the kind of continuity hip-hop is only now old enough to fully understand.

He has company.

E-40, Snoop Dogg, Fat Joe, Ice Cube, Busta Rhymes, LL Cool J and others have all helped push rap into its elder-statesman era without fully surrendering to nostalgia. Some tour. Some still record. Some do podcasts, documentaries, brand deals or Vegas-style legacy plays. The important part is that they are still visible enough to challenge the old idea that rap belongs only to the newest voice in the room.

Too $hort and E-40 made that point together during their 2020 Verzuz appearance, which played less like a battle than a Bay Area family reunion. Short told AP he would not want to battle E-40 now, either, calling him his best friend in hip-hop. But he did float a different idea: Too $hort and E-40 against another duo.

That is vintage Too $hort — competitive without pretending the brotherhood is fake.

The larger point is simpler. Hip-hop is old enough now to have 60-year-old rappers who are not curiosities. They are part of the music’s memory bank and, in some cases, still part of its Friday release calendar.

Too $hort has no interest in aging quietly for anyone’s comfort.

The genre that once made middle age look like an exit sign is now learning what older Black music forms already knew: If the voice still works, the stories still matter and the crowd still shows up, nobody has to leave because the calendar said so.