“F*ckin rat,” Keefe D allegedly said under his breath as James “Mob James” McDonald took the stand in the first criminal trial surrounding Tupac Shakur’s murder. It’s quite the ironic statement to make for someone who has spent the past decade and a half telling people his business. We can theorize for days about why he’s done interviews with VladTV or wrote a memoir that divulges details on exactly what happened in the white Cadillac on September 7, 1996, but at its core is likely a form of monetizing off of a tragedy that never had a conclusive answer on public record until recently.
Ultimately, it’s led to a moment that people expected would never happen: some form of justice in the cold case of Tupac Shakur’s murder. For 30 years, speculation has fueled conspiracies, conspiracies have fueled doubt, and somewhere along the line, people have argued that Tupac is actually alive in Cuba. If that were the case, it would’ve been great if he made his comeback in 2013 instead of letting Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre turn him into a hologram for Coachella. And yet, we’re here, in 2026, with a jury finding Keefe D guilty of first-degree murder with a deadly weapon, with intent to promote a criminal gang for his role in the killing.
That is a legal resolution to one of the most contentious deaths in hip-hop history. But the more interesting question is why we would expect a conviction to kill the conspiracy theories in the first place.
We just witnessed Elon Musk claim that Derek Chauvin is actually innocent, even though we saw the murder of George Floyd in HD and had plenty of evidence, court documents, autopsy reports, and witnesses that clearly pointed toward Chauvin’s guilt. That isn’t to say the circumstances surrounding Tupac’s murder are comparable to George Floyd’s. They obviously aren’t. But it does demonstrate how evidence doesn’t necessarily kill a conspiracy theory. Sometimes, it just gives people more material to work with.
The problem with Tupac’s case is that none of that evidence existed in 1996. Camera footage wasn’t widely available, street politics largely contained itself within the streets, police investigations hit dead ends more often as a result, and word of mouth became exactly how information spread. But playing telephone will mangle information by the time it gets to its third or fourth person. The reality is that people will believe what they want to believe, despite how much compelling evidence proves otherwise.
And that’s where Tupac’s murder becomes bigger than Keefe D. After three decades, we’re witnessing a courtroom try to resolve a mystery that pop culture turned into lore. The question of “Who Killed Tupac?” has formed the basis of documentaries, Hollywood movies, podcasts, and countless interviews. It might even be the best metric for understanding how someone’s mind works after questioning the narratives provided to them.
Tupac’s case, however, is almost the genesis of how hip-hop turned the underlying violence that existed within its industry into a sprawling true-crime ecosystem that, at this point, has damn near turned into an industry of its own. The conspiracies surrounding Tupac were born out of a lack of accessible information. But the modern version of that ecosystem has created the opposite problem. There is so much information available that almost anything can become evidence, and almost any connection can become a theory.
That is the important distinction between Tupac’s murder and the cases that followed it. In 1996, people were searching for information they simply couldn’t access. In 2026, people are drowning in information and trying to determine which pieces actually matter.
Keefe D is almost the perfect transition point between those two eras. His participation became part of the mythology surrounding the crime because he spent years talking about it and was one of the few people with insight beyond hearsay. The same media ecosystem that helped turn a decades-old murder into a recurring piece of hip-hop content also helped create the paper trail that prosecutors eventually used against him.
The prosecution’s case was largely built around statements made by Keefe D himself, whether in police and FBI interviews, VladTV interviews, or his memoir, Compton Street Legend, which his defense argued was merely fiction written for entertainment purposes. Ultimately, that argument failed, even with a lack of physical evidence that pointed directly to Keefe D's guilt. Whatever the ultimate interpretation of those statements, they demonstrate something much larger than the particulars of this case: information that once lived in the margins of hip-hop can now become permanent public record, searchable content and, eventually, potential evidence.
A lack of information created the conspiracy. Keefe D’s willingness to provide more information only gave people more material with which to construct new ones.
It feels like we’re seeing a similar phenomenon happen in real time with the D4vd case, although the circumstances are obviously very different. D4vd was arrested and charged with first-degree murder, child sexual abuse, and unlawful mutilation of human remains for the death of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez. Unlike Keefe D, D4vd wasn't necessarily doing press runs detailing his crimes, but he also wasn't hiding his relationship with the underage victim when they were on a livestream together or when he reportedly brought her on tour when he opened for SZA. In police interviews, he reportedly said he was unaware that she was a minor, that she lied about her age. Prosecutors allege that she was going to expose their relationship and he killed her to protect his career–her dismembered corpse was found in an abandoned Tesla registered in his name. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
But before an arrest was even made or the investigation concluded, the court of public opinion established a line of his guilt. The case became an immediate conspiracy off the rip, not necessarily because every theory is unwarranted, but because his own content helped build an ecosystem of narratives around the case before the legal proceedings had even played out.
The same machine that turned Keefe D into an online celebrity has broken down an up-and-comer’s artistry into a paper trail of potential evidence, and it’s horrifying to witness. In the same way that Elisa Lam’s disappearance became fodder for online theories, TikTok, YouTube, and social media as a whole have found lyrics, music videos, and other pieces of an artist’s public persona that can paint a far more sinister reality than simply a creative direction. What's scary is when these theories turn into public records–court documents and the hours of internet sleuthing draw connections, some of which can't be confirmed until a verdict is reached in court. Still, the narrative that existed before he had a chance to enter his plea plagued the public's perception worse than if she had exposed him. Innocent until proven guilty hardly applies when there's an abundance of information circulating that points toward one particular direction.
That issue isn’t exclusive to D4vd. It’s a common issue plaguing hip-hop journalism today, as Akademiks and Rob Markman duke it out over biases and as commentators attempt to make sense of criminal cases in real time. The issue isn’t necessarily the bias itself, but how that bias can project itself as a conclusion before we can get there.
6ix9ine leaped at the opportunity to call Lil Durk a snitch after Trap Lore Ross reported that Lil Durk's defense blamed everything on OTF Vonnie, a cooperating witness. Without flinching, the online narrative quickly became “Lil Durk Is A Snitch,” and the people who claimed it became voyeurs within hip-hop. Unfortunately, Trap Lore Ross's reporting in this trial has soured his credibility to some, regardless of Lil Durk asking his fans to stop harassing the media personality.
The argument shouldn’t be that anyone reporting on hip-hop’s legal issues needs to be in the streets. But accurate reporting requires understanding nuances without personal interpretations, biases, and external influences conflating with what’s happening inside the courtroom. Unfortunately, that’s often lacking when content creation and journalism turn into interchangeable terms, and the need to drive a narrative outweighs the legitimacy of connecting the dots.
That’s usually where reporting from people like Trap Lore Ross tends to show its flaws. Sometimes, the lines are blurred so well between genuine theory and rap fandom that it gets turned into fact. What’s worse is the obvious sense of voyeurism that their audiences engage in—those outside of hip-hop, outside of the streets, outside of any Black or Brown community who are enthralled by the spectacle of violence yet can’t remove their own privilege from their bias.
It’s a sick and twisted cycle of true-crime fanaticism that reinforces racial stereotypes every time a rapper gets arrested, every time a rapper gets shot, every time a rapper overdoses. Every time a rapper’s individual actions and circumstances turn into a broader assumption about their communities, the less profitable questions about the systemic conditions that surround those actions disappear.
Nipsey Hussle died in broad daylight in a plaza that he helped turn into an entrepreneurial hub that gave countless jobs to the community he grew up in. Akademiks diminished his legacy to a gangbanger who went out like one, regardless of the inspiration he brought to thousands, if not millions, across the world. The circumstances of Nipsey’s death became more useful to that particular narrative than the circumstances of his life, and that is part of the problem with an ecosystem that can make violence more profitable than context.
And yet, regardless of how Akademiks labels Nipsey Hussle, hip-hop’s true-crime economy remains just as profitable as it was when he started the War In Chiraq series.
That’s what makes Keefe D’s trial so useful to understanding the current status quo. His commentary on VladTV and his memoir became part of his celebrity long before they became part of a criminal prosecution. He volunteered the type of stories that typically aren’t documented for legal purposes, and in doing so, ensured that his version of events would remain part of the public record.
Now, those statements have helped produce a conviction. Keefe D was found guilty of Tupac’s death, even if prosecutors never accused him of pulling the trigger. But the significance of that verdict extends beyond whether it finally settles what happened in Las Vegas. It shows what happens when a decades-old mystery becomes an archive.
There will still be a subset of people who believe Tupac is hiding in Cuba or that there’s some larger conspiracy that explains what happened that night in Las Vegas. 50 Cent fanned the flames when he said he’d bet $1M that Keefe D would testify if charges were filed against Diddy–prosecutors said they would pursue charges against the mogul if new evidence emerges. Even if that never happens and Keefe D dies in jail, those theories will survive him. That’s because there has always been something more satisfying about the theory than the answer–the vindication of alternative truths, perhaps. Regardless of the lived reality, testimony turns into content; the witness is as reliable a narrator as the defendant. Hyperboles in lyrics turn into evidence, while interviews are treated like confessions. The art direction in music videos fuels rumors that ultimately feed that exact same ecosystem—the ecosystem that rarely has an incentive to end.
Tupac is dead. That’s a broadly accepted fact, yet his legacy remains plagued by rumors that he’s alive. Suge Knight Jr. once said that Tupac was living in Malaysia and was recording new music as recently as 2019 before appearing to admit the claim was merely an attempt to generate dialogue surrounding new music from the late rapper. Fast forward seven years, and he claimed that the trial is reopening old wounds.
The conspiracy theories will ultimately continue, one way or another, if only because the true-crime economy was built around the search for answers. And that became a slippery slope in and of itself, one that spurred a rabbit hole of documentaries, TikToks, podcasts, and other forms of media surrounding Tupac’s murder case. It turned Keefe D into a celebrity and Tupac’s murder into a legend. More importantly, it created a template for the way we consume criminal cases involving rappers today, where the distinction between a lyric and an admission, an allegation and a fact, a theory and a conclusion can disappear almost instantly.
The irony is that the internet has given us more information about cases involving Lil Durk and D4vd than anyone could have imagined in 1996, but more information hasn’t necessarily made the truth easier to find. Sometimes it has simply given us more things to turn into theories. And that might be the real legacy of the Tupac murder. Not that it created the first major hip-hop conspiracy but that it helped create a culture where the search for an answer became its own form of entertainment. And as long as the search for an answer is more profitable than the answer itself, the conspiracy theories will never die.
