Cassandra Wilson performs at the Ottawa Bluesfest in Ottawa, Ontario, on July 3, 2008. The two-time Grammy Award winner, whose rich contralto and adventurous approach brought jazz into conversation with blues, R&B, folk and other musical traditions, died Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2026, in her native Jackson, Mississippi. She was 70. (Photo by Scott Penner/CC BY-SA 2.0)
Cassandra Wilson, the two-time Grammy-winning singer whose unmistakable contralto carried blues, R&B, folk, country and the sounds of her native Mississippi into some of the most adventurous jazz recordings of her generation, has died. She was 70.
Wilson died Tuesday morning in her hometown of Jackson, Mississippi, Hinds County Coroner Jeramiah Howard confirmed. Her longtime manager, Robert Torre, announced her death Wednesday, saying Wilson died peacefully at home surrounded by family and close friends.
A cause of death was not announced.
Wilson emerged as a major voice in the 1980s and became one of jazz's most distinctive stars during the following decade, challenging expectations about both what a jazz singer should sound like and what songs belonged in a jazz repertoire.
Her breakthrough 1993 album, “Blue Light ’Til Dawn,” drew from blues, jazz, folk and popular music and included her interpretations of songs associated with Robert Johnson, Van Morrison and Joni Mitchell.
“New Moon Daughter” pushed the idea further in 1995, moving from Billie Holiday and Son House to Hank Williams, Neil Young and the Monkees without losing the musical identity holding it together.
The album earned Wilson her first Grammy Award for best jazz vocal performance.
She would win again for “Loverly,” released in 2008, and received four Grammy nominations during her career.
Wilson's reach also extended into hip-hop during a period when the genre's relationship with jazz was rapidly evolving. She appeared on “Swept Away” from the Roots' 1995 album “Do You Want More?!!!??!,” a record that helped establish the Philadelphia group's live-band approach to hip-hop.
For Wilson, crossing those boundaries was less a detour than an extension of where she came from.
Born in Jackson in 1955, she grew up listening to music that included Motown, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk. Her father, Herman B. Fowlkes, was a musician, and Wilson began piano lessons at 6 before taking up other instruments.
After spending time in New Orleans, she moved to New York in the early 1980s and became associated with saxophonist Steve Coleman and the M-Base Collective, the experimental group of musicians whose ideas helped reshape contemporary jazz.
Wilson eventually moved toward the spacious, acoustic sound that became one of her signatures.
Her low, instantly identifiable voice could make familiar material sound as though it had originated somewhere else entirely.
That quality allowed Wilson to move through musical traditions that were often separated by genre labels — Delta blues, jazz standards, rock, folk, R&B and country — while keeping Mississippi at the center of her sound.
Jon Batiste, who toured with Wilson early in his career, remembered that quality Wednesday.
In a tribute posted after her death, Batiste wrote that Wilson's combination of folkloric, R&B, diasporic, experimental and popular music had a major influence on him. He said her Mississippi heritage remained present regardless of how far her music traveled stylistically.
“She was one of the first people to take me on tour around the world, the great Cassandra Wilson,” Batiste wrote.
Jackson Mayor John Horhn also paid tribute to Wilson, saying the city had lost an extraordinary native daughter and the world a singular musical voice.
Wilson's later work continued to resist easy categorization.
In 2015, she released “Coming Forth by Day,” an album honoring Billie Holiday released during the centennial of Holiday's birth. It would become Wilson's final studio album.
The National Endowment for the Arts named Wilson a Jazz Master in 2022, placing her among recipients of one of the nation's highest honors for jazz musicians.
Duane “Keffe D” Davis, shown in a 2023 booking photo, was found guilty Monday, Aug. 31, 2026, of first-degree murder in the 1996 killing of Tupac Shakur. The Las Vegas jury deliberated for less than three hours before convicting Davis, the only person ever charged in the nearly 30-year-old case. (Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department)
Nearly 30 years after Tupac Shakur was gunned down on a Las Vegas street, the only person ever charged in his killing has been convicted of murder.
A Las Vegas jury found Duane “Keffe D” Davis guilty of first-degree murder with a deadly weapon Monday, delivering the first criminal conviction in a case that spent decades as one of hip-hop’s most infamous unsolved killings.
Jurors deliberated for less than three hours.
Davis, 63, was not accused of firing the shots that killed Shakur. Prosecutors instead argued that the former South Side Compton Crips leader helped organize the retaliatory attack and provided the gun used in the shooting.
Under Nevada law, prosecutors did not have to prove Davis pulled the trigger to hold him criminally responsible for Shakur’s death.
The verdict caps a case with an unusual history: For years, authorities could not bring charges in Shakur’s killing. Then Davis began publicly telling the story himself.
His accounts in interviews, a documentary, conversations with investigators and his 2019 memoir, “Compton Street Legend,” eventually became central to the prosecution’s case against him.
Shakur was shot Sept. 7, 1996, after attending a Mike Tyson fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
Earlier that night, Shakur, Death Row Records co-founder Marion “Suge” Knight and others encountered Davis’ nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, inside the hotel. Surveillance video captured Shakur and members of his entourage attacking Anderson.
Prosecutors argued that the beating set a revenge plot in motion.
Davis and three other men got into a white Cadillac and went looking for Shakur and Knight, prosecutors said. They eventually found the pair in a BMW stopped near the Las Vegas Strip.
Someone inside the Cadillac opened fire.
Shakur was struck multiple times. Knight was wounded but survived.
Shakur died six days later at a Las Vegas hospital. He was 25.
Davis has acknowledged being in the Cadillac but maintained that he was not the shooter. In previous accounts, he described passing a gun toward the vehicle’s back seat.
Prosecutors used those accounts to argue that Davis was not merely a witness to the killing but an active participant in it.
During closing arguments Monday, Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal told jurors that determining who actually pulled the trigger was not necessary to determine Davis’ guilt.
The defense offered a striking counterargument: Davis could not be trusted.
Defense attorney Michael Sanft argued that Davis embellished or fabricated portions of his accounts and that prosecutors lacked physical evidence independently tying him to the murder. The defense also pointed to inconsistencies in Davis’ various versions of what happened that night.
That argument required jurors to consider whether the man who spent years publicly describing his presence in the car and his involvement in the events surrounding Shakur’s death had been telling the truth then — or was telling the truth now when he denied criminal responsibility.
The jury sided with prosecutors.
The conviction provides a courtroom resolution to a killing that became inseparable from the mythology surrounding one of rap’s most influential artists.
Shakur was already a major star when he was killed, but 1996 had pushed his career to another level. His fourth studio album, “All Eyez on Me,” had arrived in February as a sprawling double album featuring “California Love,” “How Do U Want It” and “I Ain’t Mad at Cha.”
His death also came during a turbulent period in hip-hop, amid the heavily publicized rivalry involving artists and labels associated with the East and West coasts.
For years afterward, theories about Shakur’s killing flourished while the case remained officially unresolved.
Davis increasingly inserted himself into that history.
A once-secret 2008 interview with investigators became particularly important at trial. Davis spoke to authorities while they were investigating the killing of Christopher Wallace, the rapper known as the Notorious B.I.G., who was fatally shot in Los Angeles six months after Shakur’s death.
Davis later discussed the Shakur shooting publicly, including in the 2018 documentary series “Death Row Chronicles” and in “Compton Street Legend,” published the following year.
Those public disclosures ultimately helped investigators take another look at the long-dormant case.
Las Vegas police arrested Davis in September 2023 after a grand jury indicted him on a murder charge.
By then, the three other men authorities identified as occupants of the Cadillac were dead, leaving Davis as the only person from the vehicle who could face prosecution.
Three decades after the gunfire that killed Shakur, a jury has now held him criminally responsible.
Rapper Lil Durk, whose legal name is Durk Devontay Banks, is shown in an October 2024 booking photo following his arrest in Broward County, Fla. Banks has pleaded not guilty to federal charges stemming from an alleged murder-for-hire plot targeting rapper Quando Rondo in Los Angeles in 2022. (Broward Sheriff’s Office)
Lil Durk’s federal murder-for-hire trial opened with two sharply different explanations for a 2022 Los Angeles ambush that left one man dead.
Prosecutors told jurors Monday that the Grammy-winning Chicago rapper financed a revenge plot against Quando Rondo after the killing of King Von.
Durk’s defense says the government has the wrong mastermind.
Attorneys for the rapper, whose legal name is Durk Devontay Banks, instead pointed to former personal assistant Kavon Grant, one of three alleged co-conspirators who have pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
“This is a case about revenge, stalking and premeditated murder,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel H. Weiner told jurors, according to the *Los Angeles Times*.
Banks, 33, has pleaded not guilty.
The federal case centers on the Aug. 19, 2022, shooting outside a gas station near the Beverly Center in Los Angeles.
Prosecutors allege Banks wanted Tyquian Bowman, the Georgia rapper known professionally as Quando Rondo, killed in retaliation for the November 2020 death of Dayvon “King Von” Bennett.
Von was fatally shot following a confrontation outside an Atlanta nightclub involving members of Bowman’s entourage.
Nearly two years later, prosecutors say a group associated with Banks traveled from Chicago to Southern California, tracked Bowman and eventually attacked his vehicle.
Bowman survived.
His cousin, 24-year-old Saviay’a Robinson, was shot and killed.
In his opening statement Monday, Weiner portrayed Banks as the person who supplied both the motive and the resources behind the alleged plot.
“It was defendant Banks’ beef, it was defendant Banks’ money, it was defendant Banks’ hit men,” Weiner told the jury, according to the *Times*.
Banks was not at the scene of the shooting, a point his defense highlighted as it challenged the government’s attempt to connect him to the attack.
Attorney Marissa Goldberg told jurors that Grant — not Banks — arranged the operation.
According to the defense, Grant booked hotels, obtained vehicles and purchased ski masks before the shooting. Goldberg argued that Grant later implicated Banks after becoming a cooperating witness, giving prosecutors the celebrity defendant she described as a “big fish.”
“Mr. Banks had nothing to do with it,” Goldberg told jurors.
That dispute could become one of the trial’s defining questions.
Grant has pleaded guilty and is expected to testify for the government. So have Keith Jones and Kacey “OTF Jam” Hester, according to prosecutors.
Banks is being tried alongside Deondre Dontrell Wilson and David Brian Lindsey. Both men also deny the charges against them.
Federal prosecutors contend the group followed Bowman around Los Angeles before gunmen opened fire at the gas station. Robinson was struck several times and died from his injuries.
The defense is attacking not only the government’s cooperating witnesses but also one of the more culturally sensitive elements of the prosecution: Banks’ music.
Goldberg told jurors prosecutors are expected to introduce songs and lyrics while trying to establish Banks’ state of mind and connection to the alleged revenge plot.
She characterized the material as artistic expression rather than evidence of a murder agreement.
“This is art, this is performance,” Goldberg said.
Banks’ lawyers also say prosecutors cannot show that he actually paid or promised to pay anyone for Robinson’s killing.
“There is no money to follow,” Goldberg told the jury.
The distinction matters because prosecutors are asking jurors to find that Banks was not merely angry about Von’s death or acquainted with people who committed the shooting, but that he knowingly participated in an agreement to have Bowman killed.
The government says financial and logistical evidence, communications and testimony from cooperating defendants will establish that connection.
The defense says those same cooperating witnesses have powerful reasons to shift responsibility toward Banks as they await sentencing.
Banks’ music career adds an unusual backdrop to the proceedings.
He won his first Grammy in 2024 for “All My Life,” his collaboration with J. Cole, taking home the award for best melodic rap performance. He is also the founder of Only the Family, commonly known as OTF.
The trial does not include every allegation federal prosecutors have made against Banks.
A federal grand jury added separate racketeering-related allegations this summer involving other alleged violence in Chicago and Atlanta. Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald ordered those counts tried separately, keeping the current proceeding focused on the Los Angeles case.
Those allegations remain unresolved and are not evidence of Banks’ guilt in the trial now before jurors.
Banks has remained in federal custody since his October 2024 arrest in South Florida.
Monday’s opening statements were only the beginning of what is expected to be a closely watched trial built around competing interpretations of the same relationships, communications and witnesses.
Prosecutors say Banks used his money and influence to turn grief over King Von’s death into a murder plot.
His lawyers say the people who actually organized the attack are now trying to save themselves by putting Lil Durk at the center of it.
The dispute asks a surprisingly complicated question about one of the biggest dance acts of the early ’90s: Who has the right to call something C+C Music Factory?
The argument over who gets to use the C+C Music Factory name has moved from interviews, trademark proceedings and social media into federal court.
He contends that Williams was a featured rapper and vocalist on C+C recordings rather than a founder or owner of the act and therefore never acquired the right to turn the group name into his own performing brand.
Their debut album, “Gonna Make You Sweat,” became one of the defining crossover dance records of the period.
Its title track, “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now),” featured Williams’ rap and Martha Wash’s powerhouse vocal. It topped the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks in February 1991, while the album later climbed to No. 2.
“Here We Go (Let’s Rock & Roll)” and “Things That Make You Go Hmmm...” extended the run, with Williams prominently featured on both.
The structure of C+C Music Factory was never as straightforward as a traditional band standing together behind microphones.
The act’s history also includes one of the era’s best-known disputes over performer credit.
Wash sang the explosive vocal heard throughout “Gonna Make You Sweat,” but Zelma Davis appeared lip-syncing that part in its original music video. After Wash objected and sued, MTV added an on-screen notice distinguishing Wash’s vocals from Davis’ visual appearance.
In 1992, Williams filed a $10 million lawsuit alleging the producers had cheated him out of royalties and breached obligations connected with his recording and management agreements.
Ten days after that warning, according to the new complaint, Big Mac Entertainment released “Into the Future,” a new recording marketed on digital services under the C+C Music Factory name alongside Williams and Mark Walker.
The June 12 release is independently listed by digital music services under C+C Music Factory, Freedom Williams and Walker, with Big Mac Entertainment as the label.
He is asking the federal court to stop Williams and the other defendants from using the C+C Music Factory name for performances, recordings and other commercial activity.
He also wants Registration No. 4775972 canceled, “Into the Future” and other disputed recordings removed from digital services, and administrative control of the long-running C+C Music Factory Instagram account transferred to him.
Thirty-five years after C+C Music Factory made “Gonna Make You Sweat” unavoidable, the new lawsuit is not really asking a court to decide who audiences remember from the record.
Williams’ voice is part of that history. So are Wash’s vocals, Davis’ image and the work of numerous singers and musicians who passed through what was deliberately constructed as a “music factory.”
The legal question is narrower — and potentially much harder.
A Delaware Court of Chancery opinion issued Aug. 7, 2026, opens with a reference to the Notorious B.I.G.’s “Ten Crack Commandments” before ruling for Wayne Barrow on claims involving the Voletta Wallace trust’s membership and distributions from Notorious B.I.G., LLC. (Delaware Court of Chancery)
The Notorious B.I.G.’s famous warning about mixing family and business has found its way into a Delaware courtroom, this time in a fight over the company created to protect his legacy.
A Delaware judge has ruled that a trust established by Biggie’s late mother, Voletta Wallace, is a full member of Notorious B.I.G., LLC, handing the rapper’s former manager Wayne Barrow a significant victory in his dispute with Biggie’s widow, Faith Evans.
Chancellor Kathaleen St. J. McCormick granted partial summary judgment Friday, Aug. 7, in favor of Barrow, who is the sole trustee of the Voletta Wallace Revocable Trust. The ruling also dismissed a counterclaim by Evans and the company that sought a declaration that the trust was not a member.
That distinction carries real financial consequences. McCormick ruled that the trust qualifies as a permitted transferee under the company’s operating agreement and is entitled to the membership and distribution rights that belonged to Voletta Wallace.
The judge opened her 16-page opinion by invoking Biggie’s 1997 song “Ten Crack Commandments” and its warning against mixing relatives and business. She then noted that Wallace and Evans ultimately did exactly that when they formed Notorious B.I.G., LLC in 2007 to manage intellectual property belonging to Christopher Wallace, better known as Biggie Smalls.
The structure behind the dispute is more complicated than a simple fight over who “owns Biggie.”
Voletta Wallace and Evans each held 50% of the membership units in Notorious B.I.G., LLC under a 2023 operating agreement. Each also assigned half of her distribution interest to one of Biggie’s children — Ty’anna Wallace and Christopher Jordan “C.J.” Wallace. The arrangement left Voletta, Evans, Ty’anna and C.J. each entitled to 25% of company distributions, according to the court.
The agreement specifically listed the Voletta Wallace Revocable Trust as a party permitted to receive membership units.
That became crucial after Voletta Wallace amended her estate documents Feb. 6, 2025, just weeks before her death. The amendment removed C.J. Wallace and longtime friend Carol Sampson as successor trustees and left Barrow as the trust’s sole successor trustee. A related change to Wallace’s will made Barrow the sole executor of her estate.
Wallace died Feb. 21, 2025. Barrow formally accepted his appointment as trustee the following month.
Evans then became the sole manager of Notorious B.I.G., LLC. According to the court record, she stopped making distributions to the trust and disputed whether the trust remained a member of the company after Wallace’s amendments.
Barrow sued in Delaware Chancery Court in July 2025.
At the center of the case was a seemingly technical question with large consequences: Did changing the terms and trustees of Voletta Wallace’s trust transform it into something different from the trust specifically named in the company agreement?
McCormick said no.
The judge found that amending a trust does not create an entirely new legal entity. Because the same Voletta Wallace Revocable Trust remained in existence, it remained a permitted transferee under the LLC agreement.
The court also rejected Evans’ objection to a written consent Barrow signed in December 2025 assuming Wallace’s rights and obligations under the company agreement.
The operating agreement required such an instrument to be “reasonably satisfactory” to the company manager. McCormick found that Barrow’s consent met that standard objectively, regardless of whether Evans personally approved it.
The ruling, therefore, grants Barrow summary judgment on his claims that the trust is a member of Notorious B.I.G., LLC and is entitled to distributions.
Barrow’s attorney, Jay W. Freiberg, called the decision “a total victory in a dispute that never should have happened” in a statement to Rolling Stone. He said Wallace wanted Barrow to help steward her son’s legacy after her death.
An attorney for Evans did not immediately respond to a request for comment from People following the ruling.
The stakes surrounding Biggie’s intellectual property have increased substantially in recent years.
In March 2025, Primary Wave Music announced a partnership with the Notorious B.I.G. estate. The Wall Street Journal reported that Primary Wave acquired a 50% interest in an estate valued at more than $200 million. Primary Wave has since described its relationship with the estate as encompassing publishing, master recordings, film and television rights, name and likeness rights, brand management and archival material.
The Delaware decision does not, however, end every dispute over Wallace’s estate plan.
C.J. Wallace filed a separate case in Pennsylvania Orphans’ Court in February challenging his grandmother’s decision to remove him as a trustee and executor. His petition alleges that Barrow exerted undue influence over Voletta Wallace and had conflicts with her heirs. Those allegations have not been decided.
Evans and Notorious B.I.G., LLC had asked McCormick to put the Delaware case on hold until the Pennsylvania challenge was resolved. She refused, finding that Barrow currently has legal authority to act for the trust unless a Pennsylvania court orders otherwise.
McCormick also stressed that the Pennsylvania case does not change the separate Delaware question of whether the trust itself is a member of Notorious B.I.G., LLC. Under both versions of Voletta Wallace’s estate plan, her membership units passed into the trust.
That makes Friday’s ruling important but narrower than some headlines about the dispute suggest.
It does not decide C.J. Wallace’s allegations about the circumstances surrounding his grandmother’s final estate changes. Nor does it hand Barrow sole control of Biggie’s catalog; Evans remains manager of the LLC.
What it does establish is that the Voletta Wallace trust cannot simply be treated as an outsider to the company. It has membership rights, and it is entitled to its distributions.
Earth, Wind & Fire appear in a promotional photo. The R&B and funk group postponed its Aug. 6 concert with Lionel Richie at San Francisco's Chase Center minutes before showtime after a medical emergency involving a band member. The affected member has not been publicly identified. (Jabari Jacobs/Live Nation)
A medical emergency involving a member of Earth, Wind & Fire forced the legendary group to postpone its San Francisco concert with Lionel Richie just minutes before showtime Thursday night.
The band and Chase Center announced the postponement shortly after 7:20 p.m., about 10 minutes before the scheduled 7:30 p.m. start. Thousands of concertgoers who were already inside the arena or waiting outside were directed to leave, according to local reports.
“We are unable to perform as scheduled tonight at Chase Center in San Francisco due to a medical emergency involving a member of our band,” Earth, Wind & Fire said in a statement posted to social media.
The group has not identified the member or publicly disclosed the nature of the medical problem.
The San Francisco Fire Department received a medical call at Chase Center at approximately 5:30 p.m., spokesperson Capt. Mariano Elias told the San Francisco Chronicle. One person was taken to a hospital by private ambulance. Elias did not identify the patient or tell the newspaper what prompted the emergency response.
TMZ reported Friday morning that Elias separately described the call to the outlet as a “cardiac incident” and said the patient was transported in critical condition.
Neither Earth, Wind & Fire nor its representatives had confirmed those additional details as of Friday morning, and the identity of the patient remained undisclosed. The band's representatives referred TMZ to Earth, Wind & Fire's original statement.
ABC7 in San Francisco also reported Friday morning that officials had not released the affected band member's identity or current condition.
The abrupt postponement came as Earth, Wind & Fire and Richie near the end of their 26-city “Sing a Song All Night Long” North American tour.
According to Earth, Wind & Fire's official tour announcement, the Live Nation-produced run began June 24 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and is scheduled to conclude Aug. 14 at Moody Center in Austin.
The tour's next scheduled performance is Saturday at Acrisure Arena in Palm Desert, California, followed Sunday by a show at Intuit Dome in Inglewood. As of Friday morning, those dates remained listed on the official tour schedule, and no further postponements had been announced.
The San Francisco show will be rescheduled, the band said. Ticketholders were told to keep their tickets, which will be honored on the new date. Refunds will also be available through the original point of purchase.
“We sincerely apologize for the unexpected change and appreciate everyone’s understanding,” the group said.
The health scare follows an earlier interruption of the same tour involving Richie. During the June 24 opener in Saint Paul, Richie became dizzy during his performance and later postponed two dates before returning to the tour June 30 in Pittsburgh.
Earth, Wind & Fire remains anchored by longtime members Philip Bailey, Verdine White and Ralph Johnson. The group, founded by the late Maurice White in Chicago, has remained one of R&B and funk's most enduring touring acts more than five decades after its breakthrough.
Earth, Wind & Fire has won six Grammy Awards from 18 nominations and received the Recording Academy's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016. Its catalog includes “Shining Star,” “September,” “Reasons,” “After the Love Has Gone” and “Let's Groove.” The group was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2000 and became the first Black group to receive Kennedy Center Honors in 2019.
No new information about the affected band member had been released publicly as of Friday morning.
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.
Snoop Dogg will produce his own upcoming biographical film, "Snoop," through his Death Row Pictures banner. The Universal Pictures movie, starring Jonathan Daviss as the Long Beach rapper, is scheduled to arrive in theaters in August 2027. (Courtesy photo)
More than three decades after Death Row Records introduced Snoop Doggy Dogg to the world, Snoop Dogg is helping decide how Hollywood tells the story.
Universal Pictures will release “Snoop,” a biographical film about the Long Beach rapper’s life and career, nationwide on Aug. 6, 2027. Jonathan Daviss, best known as Pope Heyward on Netflix’s “Outer Banks,” will play Snoop in the title role.
Craig Brewer, whose films include “Hustle & Flow” and “Dolemite Is My Name,” will direct from his rewrite of a screenplay originally written by Joe Robert Cole. Cole’s credits include “Black Panther” and “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.”
Snoop will produce the film with Imagine Entertainment founder Brian Grazer and Death Row Pictures President Sara Ramaker. Universal said the movie will incorporate music from Snoop’s catalog.
That arrangement gives the project something most music biopics spend years trying to secure: the artist, the songs and the company carrying the history under the same roof.
“Snoop” will be the first film released through Death Row Pictures’ overall deal with NBCUniversal Entertainment. The project turns a label name once associated with Snoop’s turbulent rise into a vehicle for preserving — and potentially reframing — that history.
Snoop acquired the Death Row Records brand in 2022, nearly three decades after releasing his debut album through the label. He has since expanded Death Row into music, merchandise, gaming and visual entertainment rather than attempting to operate it solely as a replica of its 1990s incarnation.
“We’re building Death Row into avenues that didn’t exist,” Snoop told The Associated Press in 2024.
A theatrical film about his life may be the clearest example yet.
The movie was initially announced in 2022 with Allen Hughes attached to direct. Brewer later took over the project and revised Cole’s script. Snoop previously appeared in Brewer’s “Dolemite Is My Name,” the 2019 Eddie Murphy film about comedian and independent filmmaker Rudy Ray Moore.
NBCUniversal introduced Daviss and Snoop together at CinemaCon in Las Vegas in April. The studio said filming was expected to begin in Los Angeles this summer.
Snoop framed the movie as a continuation of the story Universal began telling with its 2015 N.W.A film, “Straight Outta Compton.”
“After my brothers got to tell their story with ‘Straight Outta Compton,’ now it’s my turn,” he told the CinemaCon audience.
Snoop appeared briefly in “Straight Outta Compton,” where LaKeith Stanfield portrayed him as a young rapper entering Dr. Dre’s orbit. “Snoop” will be the first major studio movie centered on his full life rather than treating him as part of someone else’s rise.
The challenge will not be finding enough story.
Born Calvin Broadus Jr., Snoop first reached a national audience in 1992 through Dr. Dre’s “Deep Cover” and “The Chronic.” His voice — laid-back, melodic and immediately recognizable — cut through Dre’s production without needing to compete with it.
His 1993 debut, “Doggystyle,” opened at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and became a defining release of the G-funk era. The Recording Industry Association of America has certified the album quadruple platinum.
At the same time, Snoop was facing a murder charge that threatened to reduce the career to a brief and violent chapter. A Los Angeles jury acquitted Snoop and his bodyguard, McKinley Lee, of murder charges in 1996. Both men also were acquitted of conspiracy to commit assault.
Snoop later described the verdict as a turning point. He told the AP that the experience pushed him to separate himself from people and behavior that could have sent him back to prison or ended his life.
What followed was one of hip-hop’s most unusual reinventions.
Snoop outlasted Death Row’s original collapse, recorded for Master P’s No Limit Records and moved through multiple generations of rap without losing the voice or mannerisms that made him famous. His public life eventually expanded into acting, youth football, cooking television, Olympic coverage, commercials and “The Voice.”
That range makes the eventual shape of “Snoop” an open question.
Universal has not announced the supporting cast or disclosed how much of Snoop’s life the film will cover. The studio also has not said whether the story will remain focused on his Long Beach and Death Row years or follow him through No Limit, his mainstream reinvention and his eventual return as Death Row’s owner.
Snoop’s involvement gives the filmmakers access to his memories and music. It does not yet answer the question that follows every artist-authorized biography: how much of the difficult history will make it to the screen.
The film’s current team suggests that music will not be treated as background decoration. Brewer built “Hustle & Flow” around the process of making a rap record and directed Murphy in “Dolemite Is My Name,” a story about a Black entertainer financing and protecting his own vision when the established industry had little interest in it.
Grazer produced “8 Mile,” while Universal released “Straight Outta Compton.” NBCUniversal Chair Donna Langley has described “Snoop” as a spiritual cousin to the N.W.A film.
This time, however, the artist is not waiting for a studio to decide that his history has value.
The cover of Plas Johnson’s Capitol Records album “Mood for the Blues.” Johnson, whose tenor saxophone gave Henry Mancini’s “The Pink Panther Theme” its unmistakable sound, died July 15 at 94. (Courtesy Photo: Capitol Records)
Most people heard Plas Johnson long before they knew his name.
His tenor saxophone slides into Henry Mancini’s “The Pink Panther Theme” with a low, bluesy prowl, giving the animated cat in the film’s opening credits its cool, its mischief and its unmistakable strut.
The melody became part of popular culture. The musician behind it spent much of his career outside the spotlight.
Johnson died July 15 at his Los Angeles home, his children, Eric Johnson and Stephanie Oliver, told The New York Times. He was 94. A cause of death was not announced.
He died six days before his 95th birthday. His children said he had performed at his retirement community about a month earlier.
“The Pink Panther Theme” was Johnson’s most famous performance, but it accounted for less than three minutes in a recording career that crossed jump blues, jazz, R&B, soul, rock, pop, television and film.
His saxophone appeared on recordings by the Platters, Larry Williams, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Nat King Cole, Sam Cooke, Nancy Wilson, Ella Fitzgerald, Marvin Gaye, Dr. John, the Beach Boys and scores of others. He played tenor on the Platters’ “The Great Pretender” and piccolo on Bobby Day’s “Rockin’ Robin.”
Johnson was part of a generation of Black studio musicians whose work moved across genres more freely than the music industry’s marketing categories did.
A record might be sold as pop, rock, easy listening or a Hollywood soundtrack. Johnson brought to it the phrasing he had developed in Louisiana dance halls, blues bands, jazz clubs and Los Angeles recording rooms.
Other musicians knew what his name meant.
Louisiana arranger and producer Harold Battiste recalled that when producers could not hire Johnson, they looked for someone who sounded like him. Harmonica player and producer Bob Corritore remembered him after his death as a “musician’s musician.”
Mancini did not want an imitation.
He composed “The Pink Panther Theme” with Johnson’s tenor in mind after watching David Niven play the sophisticated jewel thief at the center of Blake Edwards’ comedy.
“Plas has the sound and the style I wanted,” Mancini wrote in his autobiography.
The theme was recorded in 1963 for the film, which opened in the United States in 1964. Johnson played during the introduction, returned for the central solo and closed the piece.
He later recalled that the arrangement felt special from the first run-through. When the musicians finished, the string section joined the rest of the room in applauding — an unusual response during a professional studio session.
Mancini’s music from “The Pink Panther” won three Grammy Awards, while the score received an Academy Award nomination. The American Film Institute later ranked it No. 20 on its list of the 25 greatest American film scores.
Johnson’s identity remained less familiar than the solo.
He sometimes met listeners who told him that his performance sounded exactly like the musician heard in the movie. Johnson would explain that they were listening to the same man.
He returned to the theme decades later, rerecording it for the 2004 tribute album “Ultimate Mancini” and the 2006 remake of “The Pink Panther” starring Steve Martin. Johnson was born July 21, 1931, in Donaldsonville, Louisiana, and grew up in a family of professional musicians. His mother played piano, while his father played saxophone and banjo.
The family later moved to Thibodaux and then New Orleans. Johnson began as a singer before his father gave him a soprano saxophone. He switched to tenor at 15 and formed the Johnson Brothers Combo with his older brother, pianist Ray Johnson.
The brothers played dances around the New Orleans area, mixing the popular music of Louis Jordan, Dinah Washington and Charles Brown with the bebop of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.
The crowd did not always ask for bebop. The brothers played it anyway.
Johnson moved to Los Angeles with his siblings in 1954. Jam sessions led to recording dates, and his blues-touched sound proved valuable as rock and roll expanded the market for musicians who could combine Black musical language with the precision demanded by commercial studios.
A session with Johnny Otis brought him to the attention of Capitol Records executive Dave Cavanaugh. Johnson soon found himself recording behind Cole, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee and other major stars.
He could bring personality to a record without crowding the singer or arrangement.
“You just have to know when to start and when to stop,” Johnson said in a 2005 interview.
That judgment kept him working through decades of changes in recording technology and popular taste.
Johnson remained active in jazz while handling commercial studio work. He released albums under his own name, including “This Must Be the Plas!” and “Mood for the Blues,” and maintained a long association with trumpeter Harry “Sweets” Edison.
In 1970, he joined the studio band for “The Merv Griffin Show,” beginning a 15-year run that placed a working jazz ensemble inside a five-day-a-week television production. He continued accepting outside recording dates during the show’s run.
Johnson later appeared in Denny Tedesco’s documentary “The Wrecking Crew,” which brought wider attention to the Los Angeles session musicians behind generations of familiar records. The film also featured New Orleans drummer Earl Palmer, with whom Johnson had worked frequently.
By then, Johnson had spent more than half a century demonstrating how much identity a musician could fit into an introduction, a background fill or a few measures between a singer’s lines.
Alley Boy, the Atlanta rapper whose hard-edged records helped make Duct Tape Entertainment one of the city’s most recognizable mixtape-era movements, died Monday, his daughter confirmed on Instagram.
Multiple outlets reported his death was caused by kidney failure. He was in his early 40s. His exact age remains the subject of conflicting reports, with music publications placing his age at 42, while biographical databases list his birth date as March 3, 1981, which would make him 45.
The confirmation followed a day of confusion. Reports of Alley Boy’s death began circulating Sunday, but his daughter said Monday morning that he was still alive and criticized people for spreading the news prematurely.
Later Monday, she posted photographs in his memory, including a childhood image of Alley Boy holding her and another showing her hand resting on his. She marked the second photograph with the date July 20, 2026, confirming his death.
Alley Boy, smiles while holding two young children in an undated photograph. His daughter shared the image to her Instagram story on Monday, overlaid with an emotional message, to confirm the mixtape pioneer's death.
Alley Boy, whose real name was Curt Freeman, had publicly documented serious kidney problems and his need for a transplant. He said in 2023 that he had begun dialysis and later described undergoing treatment three times a week.
He attributed the damage to his kidneys in part to years of drinking codeine cough syrup, commonly called lean, and used later interviews to warn younger people about the habit.
Alley Boy never became one of Atlanta’s biggest crossover stars. His standing came from somewhere else.
During a period when mixtapes could establish a rapper’s weight without a national radio hit, his voice carried through East Atlanta, Southern street rap and the artists who understood what Duct Tape represented. His performances were blunt and pressurized, often making anger, fear and desperation sound like parts of the same thought.
He told The Fader in 2011 that he grew up in Edgewood Courts, began rapping at 9 and entered a recording studio by the time he was 10 or 11. With both parents struggling with drugs, he lived with his grandmother and began paying for studio sessions once he could earn his own money.
“I always fell back to the music,” he said.
Freeman and longtime friend Big Bank Black co-founded Duct Tape Entertainment, an independent East Atlanta operation whose identity was built as much around loyalty and neighborhood ties as music. The company later became home to Trouble, another respected Atlanta rapper whose death in 2022 left a lasting wound inside the group.
Alley Boy introduced himself to a wider Southern rap audience with the 2009 mixtape “Da Don.” He followed it with “The Definition of F--- S---” and its 2011 sequel, records that established his reputation as an uncompromising street rapper during one of Atlanta’s most competitive mixtape periods.
“The Definition of F--- S--- 2” also earned attention well outside the usual mixtape circuit.
Pitchfork praised the urgency of the project and Alley Boy’s consistency, noting how easily his threats and more vulnerable moments ran into one another. The tape featured Trouble, Jeezy, Yo Gotti and Freddie Gibbs, but Alley Boy’s intensity remained its center.
His catalog eventually connected him with artists including Pusha T, Meek Mill, Future, Master P and Fat Trel. “Your Favorite Rapper,” with Pusha T, challenged performers whose public images did not match the lives they described on records. “War Cry,” released in 2013, included “Stack It Up” with Meek Mill, “Mama’s House” with Trouble and collaborations with Future, Master P, Yo Gotti and Young Scooter.
His 2012 project “The Gift of Discernment” showed more of the reflection beneath the confrontation. It arrived through Duct Tape Entertainment and was followed by projects including “War Cry,” “Alley Shakur (The Soul of a Runaway Slave),” “Definition of F--- S--- Pt. 3” and “AlleyGod.”
The Duct Tape name never became the commercial empire its founders envisioned, but its influence survived the label deals and internal fractures that slowed its momentum.
Less than a month before Alley Boy’s death, he joined Big Bank for an extended episode of the “Perspektives” podcast. The two revisited Duct Tape’s rise and spoke candidly about business inexperience, industry politics, financial problems and the decisions that kept the movement from reaching its full potential.
The conversation also turned to grief, mental health and life after the deaths of people close to them, particularly Trouble. Alley Boy spoke less like a rapper protecting an image than a man taking account of what the years had cost.
News of his death brought tributes from across Atlanta rap.
21 Savage called him an East Atlanta blueprint and legend. DJ Scream remembered him as one of the best rappers the city produced. Master P, who recorded with Alley Boy as part of the Louie V Mob period, praised him as a soldier and recalled the street records they made together.
Those reactions reflected a career whose importance was never best measured by chart positions. Alley Boy helped represent an East Atlanta rap world that existed outside the city’s most famous label systems, carrying Duct Tape’s name through mixtapes, collaborations and a voice that rarely softened itself for wider approval.
His final public chapter was different. He spoke openly about dialysis, his need for a kidney and the damage he believed codeine had done to his body. The same rapper who built his name on survival began using his experience as a warning.
“What was meant to destroy me woke me up,” he wrote after starting dialysis. “Now I know my purpose.”
Rapper Lil Durk, whose legal name is Durk Banks, is shown in a 2024 booking photo after his arrest in Broward County, Fla. A federal judge has ordered two newly added counts tried separately from the murder-for-hire case scheduled to begin Aug. 20. Banks has pleaded not guilty.
A federal judge has separated racketeering-related charges from Lil Durk’s upcoming murder-for-hire trial, preserving the August start date after the rapper’s lawyers argued that prosecutors had expanded the case too late for the defense to prepare.
U.S. District Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald granted the defense’s motion Tuesday, severing Counts One and Six of the third superseding indictment from the four counts that will go before a jury Aug. 20.
The ruling is a significant pretrial victory for Durk, whose legal name is Durk Banks, but it is not a dismissal. The severed counts remain pending and may be tried separately at a later date. Banks has pleaded not guilty and remains in federal custody.
The distinction matters.
Durk’s lawyers did not persuade the court to throw out the government’s expanded indictment. They did persuade Fitzgerald not to make the defense confront the broader racketeering case at the same trial as the allegations it has been preparing to fight since Banks’ October 2024 arrest.
Prosecutors filed the third superseding indictment June 3, about 11 weeks before jury selection was scheduled to begin. The filing added a murder-in-aid-of-racketeering charge and a stalking-conspiracy charge while introducing a wider theory of criminal activity extending beyond the 2022 Los Angeles shooting at the center of the original prosecution.
The expanded allegations describe a group prosecutors call the “Banks Gang Enterprise,” which they claim used violence, drug trafficking and other crimes to strengthen the organization and reward members. Banks and his attorneys deny those allegations.
His defense team argued that prosecutors had taken a relatively focused murder-for-hire case and transformed it shortly before trial by adding years of alleged conduct from Chicago, Atlanta and elsewhere.
The defense said it had spent 19 months preparing for the Los Angeles case before receiving thousands of pages of additional material connected to the government’s expanded theory. Rather than seek another delay, Banks asked the court to separate the new allegations so the original trial could proceed as scheduled.
Prosecutors opposed that request, arguing that separate trials would duplicate evidence and prevent jurors from hearing the complete context surrounding the alleged plot.
During Tuesday’s hearing, Fitzgerald repeatedly pressed prosecutors to explain how the government would be unfairly harmed by severance. His written ruling concluded that prosecutors had not demonstrated sufficient prejudice from holding two trials, according to reporting based on the order.
The August trial stems from the fatal shooting of Saviay’a Robinson near the Beverly Center in Los Angeles on Aug. 19, 2022.
Federal prosecutors allege that Robinson’s cousin, rapper Quando Rondo, was the intended target of a retaliation plot tied to the November 2020 killing of OTF rapper King Von outside an Atlanta nightclub. Robinson was killed, while Rondo was not injured.
The government alleges that Banks offered a bounty for Rondo’s death and that people associated with his Only the Family collective used money tied to the organization to arrange flights, rental vehicles, hotel rooms and other expenses connected to the attack.
Banks is accused of helping finance and direct the alleged plot. He has denied ordering the shooting or offering payment for it.
Prosecutors have also sought to introduce selected lyrics, music videos, social media messages and evidence of public pressure on Banks to retaliate for King Von’s death. Fitzgerald previously allowed some of that material while excluding or limiting other portions, finding that certain lyrics carried too little connection to the charged crime or too great a risk of unfair prejudice.
Banks’ attorneys have consistently challenged the reliability of the government’s witnesses and its use of his music. When prosecutors unveiled the latest indictment in June, the defense called it “lipstick on a pig” and said the new allegations reflected weakness in the original case rather than newly discovered proof.
The Grammy-winning rapper has remained jailed without bond since his arrest in South Florida in October 2024. His trial has been postponed several times, sometimes over his objection, as attorneys reviewed evidence and litigated disputes involving witnesses, lyrics, videos and the defendants who will be tried together.
Tuesday’s order prevents the latest expansion from producing another immediate delay.
“Insecure: The 10th Anniversary Tour,” a 13-date fall run led by Issa Rae and showrunner Prentice Penny, with Yvonne Orji, Jay Ellis and Natasha Rothwell scheduled for select appearances opens Sept. 10 in Philadelphia and closes Oct. 8 in Inglewood, California.
Ten years after Issa Dee first worked through her problems by rapping to herself in a bathroom mirror, Issa Rae is taking the stories, arguments and lingering questions of “Insecure” on the road.
Rae announced “Insecure: The 10th Anniversary Tour” on Tuesday, a 13-city run that will reunite her with showrunner Prentice Penny for live conversations about the HBO comedy that made awkwardness, friendship and the everyday lives of Black millennials worthy of prestige television.
The tour opens Sept. 10 at The Met in Philadelphia and travels through National Harbor, Maryland; Detroit; Boston; Brooklyn; Montclair, New Jersey; Las Vegas; Oakland; Chicago; Atlanta; Irving, Texas; and Houston. It closes Oct. 8 at YouTube Theater in Inglewood, California — the city whose neighborhoods, businesses and changing identity were central to the series.
Yvonne Orji, who played Molly Carter; Jay Ellis, who played Lawrence Walker; and Natasha Rothwell, who played Kelli Prenny, are scheduled to appear on select dates. Organizers have not announced which cast members will participate in each city, so ticket buyers should not assume the full group will appear at every stop.
The live shows are expected to feature behind-the-scenes stories, candid conversations and reflections on the series’ most memorable moments and cultural impact.
Rae announced the tour with a video built around a reunion of the cast’s group chat. After Rae proposes the idea, Ellis, Orji and Rothwell quickly sign on.
“It’s ‘Insecure,’ but we’re very secure now,” Orji says near the end of the clip.
“Come see us on tour,” Rae adds.
Created by Rae and Larry Wilmore, “Insecure” premiered on HBO in October 2016 and ran for five seasons before ending in December 2021. The comedy followed Issa Dee and Molly as they negotiated friendship, relationships, work, ambition and the consequences of decisions that often looked much clearer after they had already made them.
The show’s appeal came partly from what it refused to do. Its Black characters did not exist solely to explain racism, carry a social message or serve as flawless examples of representation. They could be selfish, funny, petty, accomplished, confused, loyal and painfully wrong — sometimes within the same episode.
“Insecure” also treated South Los Angeles as more than a backdrop. Restaurants, apartments, neighborhood businesses, art spaces and community events became part of the story as Issa tried to build a career without abandoning the place that shaped her.
Music was just as important.
The series used contemporary hip-hop and R&B as an extension of its characters’ inner lives, placing established artists alongside records that many viewers were hearing for the first time. Solange consulted on the first season’s music, while longtime music supervisor Kier Lehman helped build later soundtracks that included SZA, Jazmine Sullivan, Miguel, Jorja Smith, Leikeli47, Thundercat, The Internet, Dreezy and others.
Songs did more than fill transitions. They carried scenes after the dialogue stopped, helped define Issa and Molly’s emotional distance and gave each season a musical identity that fans discussed alongside the show’s romances and betrayals.
The anniversary tour extends a reunion that began in May with “Blocc Party: An Insecure Podcast.” The weekly rewatch series features Rae and Penny revisiting individual episodes, telling stories from the writers’ room and bringing in members of the cast and crew.
A Citi cardholder presale begins Wednesday at noon local time. General ticket sales begin Thursday at noon local time through Live Nation and Ticketmaster. Most listed performances begin at 8 p.m., and several venues identify the events as restricted to guests 18 and older.
The complete tour schedule:
Sept. 10 — The Met, Philadelphia
Sept. 11 — The Theater at MGM National Harbor, National Harbor, Md.
Sept. 13 — The Fillmore Detroit, Detroit
Sept. 16 — MGM Music Hall at Fenway, Boston
Sept. 17 — Brooklyn Paramount, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Sept. 18 — The Wellmont Theater, Montclair, N.J.
Sept. 25 — The Palazzo Theatre, Las Vegas
Sept. 26 — Fox Theater, Oakland, Calif.
Oct. 1 — The Chicago Theatre, Chicago
Oct. 2 — Tabernacle, Atlanta
Oct. 3 — The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory, Irving, Texas
Oct. 4 — Bayou Music Center, Houston
Oct. 8 — YouTube Theater, Inglewood, Calif.
“Insecure” ended with its characters growing into lives that once seemed out of reach. A decade after the premiere, Rae is reopening the group chat.
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