Suge Knight
A really good documentary I can recommend which tells the whole story of suge knight and his record label is called "Welcome to Death Row" and its worth getting a copy.
He started out as a bodyguard for bobby brown back in the late 1980s. A rather big fellow, suge knight grew up in Compton and was a football player who also studied in college and was known for being very smart, as well as intimidating.
As a bodyguard, he witnessed much of what goes on in the hip hop business and was watching and learning, collecting information until it was his time to shine. Eventually he started representing a few artists in the area, one of which was entitled to credits on the vanilla ice album, which he wasn't getting.
Suge Knight took care of that, using force. He also got Dr Dre out of his contract with Eazy E, which was ripping off dre who was creating all the music and making no money. Its rumored that suge and his crew used pipes and baseball bats to get him out of that contract and start Death Row.
Some of hip hops biggest stars on the West coast representing this record label. Dr Dre, Tupac, Snoop Dogg. The label was at one time pulling in over 100 million dollars per year, which made things very serious. While today the label has basicall fallen apart and Suge has filed for bankruptcy, he certainly doesn't seem broke. He has been creating a reality TV series called "unfinished business" which should be coming out soon. Infact I really look forward to it as it shows a good look at aspiring rappers from the street level.
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