The murder of legendary rapper Tupac Shakur has gone nearly 27 years unsolved. Now, a new lead has emerged, as a Las Vegas home was searched on Monday in connection with the decades-old homicide investigation. “LVMPD can confirm a search warrant was served in Henderson, Nevada on July 17, 2023, as part of the ongoing Tupac Shakur homicide investigation,” Las Vegas police told ABC News in a Tuesday, July 18 statement. “We will have no further comment at this time.”
The “Gin & Juice” rapper was just 25 when he was shot while inside a black BMW sedan in Las Vegas on September 7, 1996, after attending a boxing match with Death Row CEO Suge Knight. A white Cadillac pulled up alongside the sedan and opened fire, and Tupac died from his injuries six days later in a local hospital.
But no arrests have been made in the drive by shooting case, and speculation about his death has been rampant in the decades since it happened. The subsequent shooting death of Notorious B.I.G. in Los Angeles on March 9, 1997, has been linked to Tupac’s death via an infamous East Coast/West Coast feud of the 1990’s, though a connection has never formally been proven.
Tupac’s death tragically came at the height of his career, as the 1995 hit “California Love” with Dr. Dre had become nearly ubiquitous. “He was happy, excited,” Snoop Dogg said in an interview for the 2023 FX docuseries Dear Mama. “He had money and he was free. But sometimes, progression is a digression, because the environment was bad for him.”
Despite his tragic death, however, Tupac seemed to know he was destined for a legacy that would extend far longer than his brief 25 years of life. “If I was white, I would be like John Wayne,” he famously told Entertainment Weekly in 1994. “I feel like a tragic hero in a Shakespeare play. Somebody who pulled himself up by his bootstraps, from poverty.”