Fox recently announced plans to premiere a forthcoming 2-hour special that will take yet another look into the mystery that shrouds the tragic deaths of rappers Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G., respectively. The new show, Who Shot Biggie & Tupac?, will be hosted by rapper, actor, and director Ice-T and award-winning journalist Soledad O’Brien.
It was on September 13, 1996 that Tupac Shakur was killed in a drive-by shooting on the Las Vegas strip. Analogously, the Notorious B.I.G. was killed a little under a year later on March 9, 1997 in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles. To this day, both deaths have been shelved as cold cases after several police investigations, and a federal inquest.
The new documentary arrives courtesy of Critical Content, the same production company behind CBS Network’s look into the death of six-year old JonBenét Ramsey in 1996. After heavily implicating Ramsey’s brother Burke Ramsey as a solid suspect, the network was in turn sued for $750 million by the surviving Ramsey.
Fox's decision to take on this narrative is an interesting one given the network’s personalities' past remarks in regard to Hip-Hop culture. Most notably, Geraldo Rivera of the network’s The Five series critiqued Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 BET performance of “Alright."
In reference to Kendrick’s “And we hate po-po, wanna kill us dead in the street fo sho,” line, Rivera infamously declared that ‘This is why I say that hip-hop has done more damage to young African-Americans than racism in recent years.” Kung Fu Kenny went on to use the clip as a sample in his “Blood” track on this year’s DAMN. album.
Who Shot Bigge & Tupac? certainly isn’t the first in-depth look at theorizing the possible assailants behind the guns that killed two of Hip-Hop’s biggest stars, and naturally, it won’t be the last.
September will mark the launch of A&E’s Biggie: The Life of Notorious B.I.G., while actors Johnny Depp and Forest Whitaker are in talks of starring in upcoming film LAbyryith which will take a dramatic look at the police investigations of the rappers’ deaths.
In addition, the USA Network is readying yet another true crime series based on former LAPD Detective Greg Kading who led task forces in the investigations of the murders.
Who Shot Biggie & Tupac? will air on September 24th.
