Tupac's family hires attorney to re-investigate alleged Diddy links

Sean "Diddy" Combs is not having a good 2024. We can say that with some confidence, in so far as Combs is currently sitting in a detention center somewhere in Brooklyn right now, having been arrested last month on federal charges of racketeering and sex trafficking. He's also apparently staring down the barrel of another 100-plus lawsuits related to allegations of sexual assault and other misconduct, most of them linked to statements about the rappers' infamous "freak off" parties. Which, we guess, is as good a time as any for the family of Tupac Shakur to start asking some fresh, pointed questions, too: The family has reportedly hired an attorney to launch a new investigation into the currently incarcerated Combs, looking into rumors linking Combs to the rapper's 1996 death.

This is some fairly aged beef, as these things go: Rumors about Diddy being somehow involved in Shakur's drive-by-shooting in Las Vegas in September of '96 have circulated in the rap world for nearly 30 years at this point. (You can hear Eminem reference it in multiple tracks, for instance, including 2018's "Killshot".) They were exacerbated in 2008 when Duane "Keefe D" Davis—who is currently facing murder charges in relation to Shakur's death, and who faces trial next year—said Combs allegedly offered him money to kill Shakur and Suge Knight. Combs, for his part, has always denied any of this, and authorities have stated on more than one occasion that they've never considered him a suspect in Shakur's murder. None of which has stopped the Shakur estate from hiring New York attorney Alex Spiro (who recently made headlines serving as Alec Baldwin's attorney in his eventually dismissed Rust shooting case) to investigate "links" between Combs and Shakur's death. (This is all per CourtTV, who talked to Spiro to confirm the news.) No further details about how that investigation is being conducted are being released at this time, but we're definitely in a "When it rains, it pours" situation regarding people looking to extract some measure of consequences from the suddenly embattled Combs.