Las Vegas Police have arrested Duane “Keffe D” Davis in connection with the 1996 unsolved murder of Tupac Shakur. According to the Associated Press, Davis was taken into custody early this morning (Sept. 29) on suspicion of murder. In July, Las Vegas police seized evidence from the home of Davis’ wife but said only that they were looking for items “concerning the murder of Tupac Shakur.”
In both a 2018 BET special and a 2019 book, Compton Street Legend, Davis admitted he was one of two passengers in the car from which the shots that killed Shakur were fired. Davis implied that his nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, was the shooter.
On Sept. 7, 1996, following a Mike Tyson fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, the 25-year-old Shakur was attacked in a drive-by shooting near the Las Vegas strip and died in the hospital six days later. Earlier in the night, there was an altercation at the MGM Grand between Anderson and members of Shakur’s entourage, after Anderson allegedly stole a Death Row Records affiliate’s chain.
Named after a Peruvian revolutionary and born to a Black Panther, Shakur was almost fated to reject authority and speak for the disenfranchised. His adolescent love of acting and poetry translated to his music. The thespian, poet, and self-proclaimed thug (despite no gang ties) who eventually acted in Above the Rim and Juice knew how to convey a range of human emotions on record. He could be sensitive (“Dear Mama,” “Keep Ya Head Up”) and passionate (“How Do You Want It”), militant while speaking truth to power (“Souljah’s Revenge”), menacing (“Can’t C Me”), or spiteful (“Hit ‘Em Up”). Delivered with religious fervor, his verses split the difference between a sermon and spoken word as he pushed in and outside the booth.
Shakur was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll of Fame in 2017. In his induction speech, Snoop Dogg told the crowd, “while we may be here to celebrate one of music’s most prolific and outspoken artists as he’s rightfully enshrined as one of the greatest musicians to ever do it, I’m here to make sure that Pac is remembered the way he would have wanted to be: a strong black man who stood up. Not somebody who acted like a rapper, but as a human. That’s what made Tupac the greatest rapper of all time.”
