Tupac’s 1995 Prison Interview Gets New Release as Original Tapes Head Toward Auction

Patrick Heaphy, left, Tupac Shakur and Jason Keller are shown at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, N.Y., during a 1995 interview shoot. (Courtesy LCM247)

Patrick Heaphy went to a maximum-security prison in upstate New York in 1995 to film Tupac Shakur for a concert against youth violence. More than three decades later, he is still trying to make that concert happen.

The filmmaker announced Thursday that an extended presentation of his interview with Shakur will premiere Oct. 12 on YouTube, exactly 31 years after the rapper's release from prison. He also plans to auction the original camera and recording tapes, with part of the proceeds intended to help revive the concert that first brought him to Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York.

The concert never materialized, but the interview became part of the extensive documentary record Shakur left behind before his death in 1996.

Heaphy said the original assignment took an unexpected turn almost as soon as he arrived.

TUPAC SHAKUR | ARCHIVE / 2026

One interview. Two different releases.

1995The original recording

Filmed at Clinton Correctional Facility. Footage later appeared in commercially distributed documentaries.

2026The extended premiere

Heaphy announces a new presentation, plans to auction his equipment and proposes an anti-violence concert.

Whether the new edition includes previously unseen footage remains unclear.

View the earlier documentary's library record

"Most people don't know that I went to Dannemora to film Tupac for a proposed jailhouse concert aimed at stopping youth violence," Heaphy said in Thursday's announcement.

Shakur, he recalled, greeted the crew with news that he expected to be released.

In an earlier interview with Rorschach Art Publication, Heaphy described traveling to the prison with interviewer Frank Cooley and production assistant Jason Keller. What followed was an unusually candid encounter with a rapper whose music was dominating the charts even as his legal troubles dominated headlines.

Shakur was serving a sentence stemming from a New York sexual abuse conviction. His third solo album, "Me Against the World," had debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in March 1995, making him the first artist to achieve that distinction while incarcerated.

The album included "Dear Mama," his tribute to his mother, Afeni Shakur, and offered a more reflective side of an artist frequently portrayed through his confrontations with police, rivals and the music industry.

Heaphy's footage captured Shakur discussing his circumstances, ambitions and experiences behind bars during a period when his career and personal life were about to change dramatically.

Shakur was released on $1.4 million bond pending appeal on Oct. 12, 1995, and joined Death Row Records. Four months later, he released "All Eyez on Me," the blockbuster double album that included "California Love" and "2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted."

He was fatally wounded in a Las Vegas shooting in September 1996 and died six days later at 25.

Behind the story

Read the original announcement and the filmmaker's account of the 1995 prison shoot.

Read LCM247's October 8 announcementRead Patrick Heaphy's earlier interview

Links to original sources

Although the upcoming presentation is being promoted as an extended version of the 1995 conversation, the footage itself is not a newly discovered recording.

Material from the prison session appeared in earlier documentaries, including "Tupac vs." and "Tupac Uncensored and Uncut: The Lost Prison Tapes," the latter released in 2009 and co-directed by Heaphy and Ken Peters.

The producers have not specified how much, if any, previously unreleased footage will appear in the new edition.

The planned auction presents a separate chapter in the recording's history.

Heaphy and his production company, LCM247, say they intend to offer the original Sony camera used during the prison shoot, along with source tapes from the production. Heaphy says he has personally authenticated the camera and holds the registered U.S. copyright to the interview footage.

An auction house, sale date and estimated value have not been announced.

The filmmaker also hopes to use a portion of the proceeds and a proposed crowdfunding campaign to finance a concert featuring contemporary artists and addressing youth violence.

For now, that event remains a proposal. No performers, venue or date have been identified.

The effort would revisit an idea conceived at a particularly turbulent point in Shakur's life, when the rapper was balancing commercial success with imprisonment and speaking publicly about the conditions affecting young Black Americans.

Whether the new release offers substantially more of that conversation remains to be seen.

What Heaphy wants to accomplish with it, however, has come full circle.

"If the film, the camera and the tapes can now help us finally make that concert happen," he said, "that feels like the right next chapter."

"The Tupac Prison Interview" is scheduled to premiere Monday, Oct. 12, at 9 p.m. Eastern on LCM247's YouTube channel.

Freddie Jackson, Platinum-Selling R&B Singer, Dies at 70

Freddie Jackson appears during a 2019 interview on "Sister Circle Live." The R&B singer, whose hits included "Rock Me Tonight (For Old Times Sake)" and "You Are My Lady," died Monday at 70. (Sister Circle TV via screenshot)

Freddie Jackson, whose unmistakable voice and string of chart-topping love songs made him one of R&B's biggest stars of the 1980s, has died. He was 70.

Jackson died Monday, three days after his birthday, his family announced Tuesday on his official Instagram account. No cause of death was disclosed.

The Harlem-born singer ruled R&B radio with hits including “Rock Me Tonight (For Old Times Sake),” “You Are My Lady,” “Tasty Love” and “Have You Ever Loved Somebody,” collecting 10 No. 1 singles on Billboard's R&B chart and two platinum albums along the way.

His family remembered him as a “kind, generous soul” and thanked the listeners who had supported his music and performances over the decades.

FAMILY ANNOUNCEMENT

Jackson's family announced his death Tuesday on his official Instagram account. Read the family's original statement.

Jackson's rise was immediate.

His 1985 Capitol Records debut, Rock Me Tonight, produced four Top 10 R&B singles. The title track spent six weeks at No. 1, while “You Are My Lady” became his biggest crossover hit, introducing him to pop audiences without sacrificing the sound that had made him a favorite on Black radio.

Freddie Jackson performs "Rock Me Tonight (For Old Times Sake)," his 1985 breakthrough hit. (Capitol Records/YouTube)

His follow-up, 1986's Just Like the First Time, kept the hits coming. “Tasty Love,” “Have You Ever Loved Somebody” and “Jam Tonight” all topped the R&B chart, establishing Jackson as much more than a balladeer.

He also reached No. 1 with “A Little Bit More,” a duet with Melba Moore, and continued his run of hits into the 1990s.

Jackson's commercial success placed him among the leading male R&B singers of a period dominated by artists including Luther Vandross. But it also reflected the power of Black radio, where an artist could build a major career without achieving comparable success on the pop charts.

Jackson was keenly aware of that distinction.

In a 1988 interview with the Los Angeles Times, he discussed the pressure on Black performers to change their music in pursuit of crossover success.

“Crossover is just icing on the cake,” he told the newspaper.

Freddie Jackson performs "You Are My Lady," one of his signature R&B hits. (Capitol Records/YouTube)He was equally clear about changing musical tastes. As Keith Sweat and Al B. Sure! helped usher in a more hip-hop-influenced era of R&B, Jackson told Billboard in 1988 that he respected the emerging sound but intended to remain rooted in the traditional soul music his audience expected.

The approach continued to pay off. His third album, Don't Let Love Slip Away, produced more R&B hits, including “Hey Lover” and “Nice 'n' Slow.” The title track from his 1990 album Do Me Again also reached No. 1.

His cultural footprint stretched beyond the charts. In 2000, Big Boi name-checked Jackson and Teddy Pendergrass in OutKast's “So Fresh, So Clean,” placing two generations of soul singers in the middle of a hip-hop classic.

Born Oct. 2, 1956, Jackson began singing gospel at Harlem's White Rock Baptist Church, where he met future producer and songwriter Paul Laurence. After working New York clubs and singing with the group Mystic Merlin, he recorded demos and sang backup for Moore before launching his solo career.

His breakthrough earned two Grammy nominations in 1986: best new artist and best male R&B vocal performance for “You Are My Lady.”

Jackson continued recording long after his chart dominance faded, releasing music independently and returning in 2023 with My First Love.

In 2024, he revealed that he had been diagnosed with kidney disease and partnered with the National Kidney Foundation to promote awareness. His family has not linked the illness to his death.

The family said details of memorial arrangements and opportunities for fans to honor Jackson would be announced later.

Memphis Honors Tay Keith With Music Lab, Key to City and Day of His Own

Grammy-nominated producer Tay Keith is shown in an undated promotional portrait. Memphis Public Libraries dedicated the Tay Keith Music Lab on Monday, creating a music production space for young people in honor of the late Memphis hitmaker, whose credits included Travis Scott’s “Sicko Mode,” Drake’s “Nonstop” and Beyoncé’s “Before I Let Go.”

Before Tay Keith was producing No. 1 records with some of hip-hop's biggest stars, his sister remembers the work beginning in a little blue, yellow and white house on Bruton Street in Memphis.

On Monday, his hometown put his name on a room where somebody else's career might begin.

Memphis Public Libraries formally dedicated its music production room inside Cloud901 at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library as the Tay Keith Music Lab, honoring the late Grammy-nominated producer while expanding an initiative aimed at giving young people access to music-production tools and instruction.

Keith's older sister, Lisa Austin, told those gathered for the dedication that the family's Raleigh home was where her brother discovered his love of music, started making beats and built the foundation for what the world would eventually know as Tay Keith.

But Austin made clear that the family did not want the room to function simply as a memorial.

“This lab is more than just putting Tay's name on a room,” Austin said. “It's about access and opportunity.”

Cloud901 is Memphis Public Libraries' free technology and production center for teenagers ages 13 to 18. The Tay Keith Legacy Foundation donated to the project, which is being developed into a broader initiative around Keith's life, career and commitment to young people.

Plans include hands-on beat-making and music-production instruction, a permanent archival collection and oral histories with Keith's relatives, friends and associates.

Library officials said they hope to collect photographs, handwritten notes, studio material, correspondence, memorabilia and other pieces of Keith's history. Family members and others who knew him will also be invited to record their memories through the library's 901Voices oral-history project.

At Monday's ceremony, library officials said the collection is intended to preserve not only Keith's career but the stories behind it for people who may encounter his work generations from now.

The project also extends work Keith had begun before his death.

Memphis Mayor Paul Young said Keith and his team contacted him shortly after Young became mayor because the producer wanted to discuss how he could make deeper investments in Memphis.

One conversation turned into a standing habit.

Keith told Young he planned to call him every Monday.

Tay Keith's family and Memphis officials dedicate the Tay Keith Music Lab at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library on Sept. 21, 2026.

“And he called me literally every Monday,” Young said.

Young said that even after becoming a successful producer, Keith was routinely checking in with the mayor because he wanted to figure out how to make a larger impact on the city that raised him.

Keith also worked with the city's Office of Youth Services on the My Memphis Poetry Challenge, which encouraged young Memphians to use writing to express their creativity and connection to the city. Young cited the project Monday as another example of Keith's interest in creating opportunities for young people. The competition itself was also documented by the Memphis City Council and local reporting.

Memphis added two other honors around what would have been Keith's 30th birthday.

Young proclaimed Sept. 20 Tay Keith Day in Memphis and presented Keith's family with a key to the city during Monday's dedication.

The mayor said young Memphians entering the lab will be able to see Keith's name, use the equipment and recognize that someone from their city reached the highest levels of the music business.

“Somebody from Memphis did it, and they can too,” Young said.

Keith, born Brytavious Lakeith Chambers, developed from a young Memphis producer into one of the most successful hitmakers of his generation. His credits include Travis Scott's “Sicko Mode,” Drake's “Nonstop” and “First Person Shooter,” along with work for artists including Beyoncé, Eminem, Cardi B, 21 Savage and Sexyy Red. BMI honored him three times as its R&B/Hip-Hop Producer of the Year.

He died June 18 at his Nashville apartment at 29.

Days before the Memphis ceremony, the Nashville medical examiner disclosed that Keith's death had been ruled accidental. The cause was toxicity involving ketamine and several mitragynine-related compounds associated with kratom. Police had said no foul play was suspected.

Monday's dedication, however, was centered less on how Keith died than on what his family and hometown want to continue in his name.

Austin said the hope is that a young person walks into the Tay Keith Music Lab, creates a first beat and eventually becomes the next major producer or creative to come out of Memphis.

Then she distilled the purpose of the room into two sentences.

“Tay's legacy lives on,” Austin said. “And now he gets to help build someone else's.”

Tone Capone, Producer Who Connected Bay Area and Houston Rap, Dies at 59

FILE — Producer Tone Capone, born Anthony Douglas Gilmour, is shown DJing in the 1980s. Capone, the Bay Area beatmaker behind Luniz's 1995 hit "I Got 5 On It" and a frequent Rap-A-Lot Records collaborator, died Saturday, Sept. 12, 2026. He was 59. (Photo: Tone Capone / Instagram)

The Bay Area beatmaker behind Luniz’s 1995 crossover hit also produced seven tracks on Scarface’s platinum album and Devin the Dude’s “Sticky Green.”

Tone Capone, the Bay Area producer behind Luniz’s “I Got 5 On It” whose catalog later reached deep into Houston through Scarface, Devin the Dude and Rap-A-Lot Records, died Saturday.

He was 59.

Capone, born Anthony Douglas Gilmour, was born in Berkeley and raised in North Oakland near Bushrod Park. Close family members reported his death online Sunday.

Legendary Bay Area producer Tone Capone has passed away at age 59. Causes are unknown at the time. His body of work includes

Luniz - I Got 5 On It
Celly Cel- It’s Goin Down
3xKrazy - Keep It On The Real
Mac Dre - Fire
Mac Mall - Servin Game

He also produced a lot of the classic… pic.twitter.com/B0jkVK9eER

— Nstant Vntage (@nstantvntage) September 14, 2026

A cause of death had not been announced as of Monday. Capone had lived in the Las Vegas area since 2021.

For many listeners, his signature will always be “I Got 5 On It.”

The 1995 Luniz single reached No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, while the duo’s debut album, “Operation Stackola,” reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart.

The record's construction was more complicated than a simple sample flip.

The official music video for Luniz's 1995 crossover hit "I Got 5 On It." The track, produced by Tone Capone, reached No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 and became one of the most recognizable anthems in West Coast hip-hop history. (Video via YouTube)

Luniz brought Capone Club Nouveau’s “Why You Treat Me So Bad” as a musical starting point. Capone told The Guardian in 2019 that the original groove did not hit hard enough for the sound he wanted.

“I wanted everything in your face,” he said.

Capone slowed the groove and added bells, voices and scratches. In a separate interview with TheWrap, he explained that he replayed the central musical idea rather than directly sampling the Club Nouveau recording. He identified Audio Two’s “Top Billin’” and Kool & the Gang’s “Jungle Boogie” as the record’s direct sampled elements.

Capone also pushed for a singer on a hook that Luniz originally rapped. Michael Marshall, his old Berkeley High School friend and a member of Timex Social Club, supplied the melody that became one of the song's defining features.

The record found another life nearly a quarter-century later.

In 2019, a slowed, orchestral “Tethered Mix” of “I Got 5 On It” became a recurring musical device in Jordan Peele’s horror film “Us,” turning a familiar party record into something deliberately unsettling.

Capone's work had begun long before his biggest hit. He learned to DJ while attending Berkeley High and was playing parties and other events while still young. By the mid-1980s, he was building beats with four-track cassette recorders, drum machines, turntables and tape decks.

His résumé eventually expanded well beyond Northern California.

By the mid-1990s, Capone had entered the Rap-A-Lot orbit that connected Bay Area artists with Houston. Mike Dean later told HipHopDX that he brought Capone in to help produce Scarface’s 1997 album “The Untouchable.”

The surviving album credits show how substantial that role became.

Scarface's "Smile," featuring 2Pac and Johnny P, from the 1997 platinum album "The Untouchable." Tone Capone served as a co-producer on the track alongside Mike Dean and Scarface, marking one of his most prominent collaborations with Houston's Rap-A-Lot Records. (Video via YouTube)

Capone shares production credit on seven tracks: “Untouchable,” “Southside,” “Money Makes the World Go Round,” “Mary Jane,” “Smile,” “Smartz” and “Faith.” His collaborators across those tracks included Scarface, Dean, N.O. Joe and Domo.

“The Untouchable” debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and went platinum.

Among Capone’s contributions was “Smile,” the Scarface record featuring 2Pac and Johnny P. Official Rap-A-Lot metadata credits the production to Scarface, Dean and Capone.

The Houston connection continued beyond Scarface.

Capone produced “Sticky Green,” featuring Scarface, from Devin the Dude’s 1998 debut album, “The Dude.” Devin later recalled that Scarface, Capone and a musician named Harm brought the music to him as the song was taking shape.

Back home, Capone’s credits stretched across generations of Bay Area rap. He worked with artists including E-40, Celly Cel, 3XKrazy, The Click, Dru Down, Mac Dre, Mac Mall and the Jacka.

He remained involved in music in later years even after taking a hospital job and eventually retiring from that work.

“I Got 5 On It” will inevitably be the first record attached to Tone Capone’s name.

The credits that come after it — Scarface, 2Pac, Devin the Dude, E-40, Celly Cel, 3XKrazy and Mac Dre among them — explain why his legacy was considerably larger than one hit.

Timothy Joseph, the Original Buc Wild of ‘Star & Buc Wild,’ Dies at 47

Timothy “Buc Wild” Joseph, the broadcaster who helped take “Star & Buc Wild” from Manhattan public-access television to MTV and one of the most visible morning shows in New York hip-hop radio, has died. He was 47.

His older half-brother and longtime broadcasting partner, Troi “Star” Torain, announced Joseph’s death during a livestream Wednesday, saying his brother died Sunday, Sept. 6.

A cause of death has not been publicly confirmed.

Torain described Joseph as someone who was “like a son” to him and spoke about a side of his brother that listeners rarely heard on the air. Joseph struggled with dyslexia, Torain said, and the two worked on his reading while they were at Hot 97, with station executives Tracy Cloherty and Judy Ellis among those who supported him.

For listeners who remember New York hip-hop radio at the turn of the millennium, Buc Wild was part of a name that seemed to turn up everywhere for a while — in print, on television and eventually in morning drive.

The idea started with Torain’s “Reality Check” column in The Source, where he developed the Star and Buc Wild characters during the 1990s. In 1998, the concept became a public-access television show on Manhattan Neighborhood Network, with Joseph beside his brother as Buc Wild.

A year later, MTV brought the pair to “Beat Suite,” a weekday music program that gave the act a national platform.

Radio made the name considerably bigger.

 

By March 2000, Hot 97 had moved Star and Buc Wild into morning drive alongside Miss Jones and DJ Enuff. Contemporary radio-trade coverage identified Joseph as Torain’s partner as the station assembled a show designed to compete in one of the most important and closely watched radio markets in the country.

The timing mattered.

This was an era when New York terrestrial radio could still shape the daily conversation around hip-hop. A record could gain momentum because Hot 97 played it. An interview could become news before the morning show was over. On-air personalities were not merely introducing songs; they were part of the culture surrounding them.

Torain supplied much of the confrontation that made “Star & Buc Wild” famous — and frequently infamous. Joseph played a different role.

Torain later described Buc Wild as the younger voice who helped keep him connected to artists, records and changes in the culture. That dynamic gave the show its balance: Star pushed, provoked and argued, while Buc Wild operated closer to the music and the younger audience the program was trying to reach.

The Hot 97 run lasted until 2003. Star & Buc Wild subsequently signed with Clear Channel and worked in Hartford before the brand returned to New York at rival Power 105.1.

That part of the history is more complicated than many retrospectives suggest.

By July 2005, Torain told the radio trade publication Radio & Records that Joseph had been the original Buc Wild, but another staffer, Kaheem, was then filling the role. By that point, “Buc Wild” had effectively become both Joseph’s broadcasting identity and a character within the larger Star & Buc Wild franchise.

It is an important distinction when tracing Joseph’s career.

The Power 105.1 show ended in 2006 after Torain made threatening, racist and sexually explicit remarks involving the family of rival Hot 97 personality DJ Envy. Clear Channel fired Torain after the broadcast.

Contemporary reports attributed those remarks to Torain, not Joseph.

Joseph eventually reunited with his brother on the air. In late 2007, The Associated Press reported that Torain and Joseph were preparing to return together to New York morning radio, and Pulse 87 launched in 2008 with “Star & Buc Wild” in its morning lineup.

By then, the media environment that had made their name was beginning to change.

The kind of personality-driven, free-form hip-hop conversation that once required space in a magazine, a public-access slot or a terrestrial radio signal was moving online. Blogs, streaming video, podcasts and social media would eventually make that style of commentary available to anyone with an audience.

Torain followed it there, building “The Star Report” online and continuing the confrontational broadcasting style that had defined much of his career.

Joseph became far less visible.

That makes Torain’s remembrance of his brother more revealing than another rundown of radio stations and controversies. Behind the deliberately outsized Buc Wild character was a younger brother navigating dyslexia, learning the business and helping turn an idea that began in a magazine column into a recognizable name in hip-hop media.

“Star & Buc Wild” was never built to be restrained. Provocation was part of the product, and the show repeatedly pushed — and sometimes crossed — the limits of what radio stations were prepared to put on the air.

But Joseph’s place in that history is more specific than the controversies surrounding the brand.

He was there before the major stations and before the national exposure. He was beside Torain when “Star & Buc Wild” was a public-access show, when MTV came calling and when Hot 97 put the pair in front of New York every morning.

The Buc Wild role would eventually be filled by someone else.

Timothy Joseph was the original.

Cassandra Wilson, Singular Voice Who Connected Jazz, Blues and R&B, Dies at 70

Cassandra Wilson performs at the Ottawa Bluesfest in Ottawa, Ontario, on July 3, 2008. The two-time Grammy Award winner, whose rich contralto and adventurous approach brought jazz into conversation with blues, R&B, folk and other musical traditions, died Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2026, in her native Jackson, Mississippi. She was 70. (Photo by Scott Penner/CC BY-SA 2.0)

Cassandra Wilson, the two-time Grammy-winning singer whose unmistakable contralto carried blues, R&B, folk, country and the sounds of her native Mississippi into some of the most adventurous jazz recordings of her generation, has died. She was 70.

Wilson died Tuesday morning in her hometown of Jackson, Mississippi, Hinds County Coroner Jeramiah Howard confirmed. Her longtime manager, Robert Torre, announced her death Wednesday, saying Wilson died peacefully at home surrounded by family and close friends.

A cause of death was not announced.

Wilson emerged as a major voice in the 1980s and became one of jazz's most distinctive stars during the following decade, challenging expectations about both what a jazz singer should sound like and what songs belonged in a jazz repertoire.

Her breakthrough 1993 album, “Blue Light ’Til Dawn,” drew from blues, jazz, folk and popular music and included her interpretations of songs associated with Robert Johnson, Van Morrison and Joni Mitchell.

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“New Moon Daughter” pushed the idea further in 1995, moving from Billie Holiday and Son House to Hank Williams, Neil Young and the Monkees without losing the musical identity holding it together.

The album earned Wilson her first Grammy Award for best jazz vocal performance.

She would win again for “Loverly,” released in 2008, and received four Grammy nominations during her career.

Wilson's reach also extended into hip-hop during a period when the genre's relationship with jazz was rapidly evolving. She appeared on “Swept Away” from the Roots' 1995 album “Do You Want More?!!!??!,” a record that helped establish the Philadelphia group's live-band approach to hip-hop.

For Wilson, crossing those boundaries was less a detour than an extension of where she came from.

Born in Jackson in 1955, she grew up listening to music that included Motown, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk. Her father, Herman B. Fowlkes, was a musician, and Wilson began piano lessons at 6 before taking up other instruments.

After spending time in New Orleans, she moved to New York in the early 1980s and became associated with saxophonist Steve Coleman and the M-Base Collective, the experimental group of musicians whose ideas helped reshape contemporary jazz.

Wilson eventually moved toward the spacious, acoustic sound that became one of her signatures.

Her low, instantly identifiable voice could make familiar material sound as though it had originated somewhere else entirely.

That quality allowed Wilson to move through musical traditions that were often separated by genre labels — Delta blues, jazz standards, rock, folk, R&B and country — while keeping Mississippi at the center of her sound.

Jon Batiste, who toured with Wilson early in his career, remembered that quality Wednesday.

In a tribute posted after her death, Batiste wrote that Wilson's combination of folkloric, R&B, diasporic, experimental and popular music had a major influence on him. He said her Mississippi heritage remained present regardless of how far her music traveled stylistically.

“She was one of the first people to take me on tour around the world, the great Cassandra Wilson,” Batiste wrote.

Jackson Mayor John Horhn also paid tribute to Wilson, saying the city had lost an extraordinary native daughter and the world a singular musical voice.

Wilson's later work continued to resist easy categorization.

In 2015, she released “Coming Forth by Day,” an album honoring Billie Holiday released during the centennial of Holiday's birth. It would become Wilson's final studio album.

The National Endowment for the Arts named Wilson a Jazz Master in 2022, placing her among recipients of one of the nation's highest honors for jazz musicians.

Jury Convicts Duane ‘Keffe D’ Davis of Murder Nearly 30 Years After Tupac Shakur’s Death

Duane “Keffe D” Davis, shown in a 2023 booking photo, was found guilty Monday, Aug. 31, 2026, of first-degree murder in the 1996 killing of Tupac Shakur. The Las Vegas jury deliberated for less than three hours before convicting Davis, the only person ever charged in the nearly 30-year-old case. (Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department)

Nearly 30 years after Tupac Shakur was gunned down on a Las Vegas street, the only person ever charged in his killing has been convicted of murder.

A Las Vegas jury found Duane “Keffe D” Davis guilty of first-degree murder with a deadly weapon Monday, delivering the first criminal conviction in a case that spent decades as one of hip-hop’s most infamous unsolved killings.

Jurors deliberated for less than three hours.

Davis, 63, was not accused of firing the shots that killed Shakur. Prosecutors instead argued that the former South Side Compton Crips leader helped organize the retaliatory attack and provided the gun used in the shooting.

Under Nevada law, prosecutors did not have to prove Davis pulled the trigger to hold him criminally responsible for Shakur’s death.

The verdict caps a case with an unusual history: For years, authorities could not bring charges in Shakur’s killing. Then Davis began publicly telling the story himself.

His accounts in interviews, a documentary, conversations with investigators and his 2019 memoir, “Compton Street Legend,” eventually became central to the prosecution’s case against him.

Shakur was shot Sept. 7, 1996, after attending a Mike Tyson fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

Earlier that night, Shakur, Death Row Records co-founder Marion “Suge” Knight and others encountered Davis’ nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, inside the hotel. Surveillance video captured Shakur and members of his entourage attacking Anderson.

Prosecutors argued that the beating set a revenge plot in motion.

Davis and three other men got into a white Cadillac and went looking for Shakur and Knight, prosecutors said. They eventually found the pair in a BMW stopped near the Las Vegas Strip.

Someone inside the Cadillac opened fire.

Shakur was struck multiple times. Knight was wounded but survived.

Shakur died six days later at a Las Vegas hospital. He was 25.

Davis has acknowledged being in the Cadillac but maintained that he was not the shooter. In previous accounts, he described passing a gun toward the vehicle’s back seat.

Prosecutors used those accounts to argue that Davis was not merely a witness to the killing but an active participant in it.

During closing arguments Monday, Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal told jurors that determining who actually pulled the trigger was not necessary to determine Davis’ guilt.

The defense offered a striking counterargument: Davis could not be trusted.

Defense attorney Michael Sanft argued that Davis embellished or fabricated portions of his accounts and that prosecutors lacked physical evidence independently tying him to the murder. The defense also pointed to inconsistencies in Davis’ various versions of what happened that night.

That argument required jurors to consider whether the man who spent years publicly describing his presence in the car and his involvement in the events surrounding Shakur’s death had been telling the truth then — or was telling the truth now when he denied criminal responsibility.

The jury sided with prosecutors.

The conviction provides a courtroom resolution to a killing that became inseparable from the mythology surrounding one of rap’s most influential artists.

Shakur was already a major star when he was killed, but 1996 had pushed his career to another level. His fourth studio album, “All Eyez on Me,” had arrived in February as a sprawling double album featuring “California Love,” “How Do U Want It” and “I Ain’t Mad at Cha.”

His death also came during a turbulent period in hip-hop, amid the heavily publicized rivalry involving artists and labels associated with the East and West coasts.

For years afterward, theories about Shakur’s killing flourished while the case remained officially unresolved.

Davis increasingly inserted himself into that history.

A once-secret 2008 interview with investigators became particularly important at trial. Davis spoke to authorities while they were investigating the killing of Christopher Wallace, the rapper known as the Notorious B.I.G., who was fatally shot in Los Angeles six months after Shakur’s death.

Davis later discussed the Shakur shooting publicly, including in the 2018 documentary series “Death Row Chronicles” and in “Compton Street Legend,” published the following year.

Those public disclosures ultimately helped investigators take another look at the long-dormant case.

Las Vegas police arrested Davis in September 2023 after a grand jury indicted him on a murder charge.

By then, the three other men authorities identified as occupants of the Cadillac were dead, leaving Davis as the only person from the vehicle who could face prosecution.

Three decades after the gunfire that killed Shakur, a jury has now held him criminally responsible.

Davis faces the possibility of life in prison.

Wacko, Rapper Whose ‘Nolia Clap’ Became a New Orleans Anthem, Dies

The cover of UTP's 2004 “Nolia Clap” release. The title track, co-written by Damon “Wacko” Grison, Juvenile, Skip and producer Donald “XL” Robertson, reached No. 31 on the Billboard Hot 100. (Rap-A-Lot Records)

Damon “Wacko” Grison, the New Orleans rapper whose work with Juvenile and Skip helped turn “Nolia Clap” into a national hit and an enduring piece of the city's hip-hop history, has died.

News of Grison's death was announced by New Orleans Room on Instagram, followed by a remembrance from Mia X and condolences from Young Buck, DJ Paul and Big Freedia. His age and cause of death have not been publicly confirmed.

For listeners who encountered UTP during its national breakthrough in the mid-2000s, Wacko was one of the three rappers behind “Nolia Clap.”

His connection to the record ran considerably deeper than that.

Juvenile said so himself.

“That's really more like Wacko's song,” Juvenile told Complex in 2013 while breaking down the most important records of his career.

According to Juvenile, Wacko had been singing the “Nolia Clap” hook around the studio before the group traveled to the West Coast and connected with producer Donald “XL” Robertson. They began building the track around Wacko's idea, with Juvenile saying Mannie Fresh and producer Slice T later added touches to the record.

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The songwriting credits support Wacko's creative role.

Grison shares credit on “Nolia Clap” with Terius Gray, better known as Juvenile; Clifford Nicholas, better known as Skip; and Robertson.

The record became UTP's biggest national hit, reaching No. 31 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 9 on Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks chart.

That success arrived after UTP had undergone considerable change.

Juvenile formed the Uptown Project Playas as he was separating from Cash Money Records. The early collective had fluid membership and included appearances from Wacko, Skip, Soulja Slim, Corey Cee and Young Buck. After Young Buck left for G-Unit and Soulja Slim was killed in 2003, UTP narrowed into the Juvenile-Wacko-Skip trio most listeners came to know.

Their album “The Beginning of the End...” arrived in May 2004 through Rap-A-Lot Records, with “Nolia Clap” opening the record.

The “Nolia” referred to the Magnolia Projects, officially the C.J. Peete Public Housing Development, in New Orleans' Central City neighborhood. The complex became an important incubator of the city's music across generations and was home to artists including Juvenile and Soulja Slim.

A Closer Walk, the New Orleans music-history project presented by WWOZ, includes “Nolia Clap” among the recordings tied to the Magnolia and traces the development's role in the rise of New Orleans hip-hop.

Wacko and Skip remained part of Juvenile's musical orbit after UTP's breakthrough. Both appeared on Juvenile's 2006 album “Reality Check,” including Wacko's appearances on “Sets Go Up” and “Way I Be Leanin'.”

By 2007, Juvenile was out of UTP and Wacko and Skip continued the group without him, releasing “Back Like We Left Something” through Rap-A-Lot.

Mia X said in her remembrance that Wacko had continued creating music before his death, praising his wordplay and distinctive cadence and saying he had been working on material she considered special.

Wacko's national profile may have been tied most closely to one record. But the history of that record gives him a larger role than the shorthand of “UTP member” suggests.

Years before there was any reason to argue about Wacko's legacy, Juvenile had already made the most important point about the song.

It was, he said, “more like Wacko's song.”

Latimore, ‘Let’s Straighten It Out’ Singer and Blues Hall of Famer, Dies at 86

Latimore performs at the Nancy Jazz Pulsations festival in Nancy, France, on Oct. 22, 1983. The blues and R&B singer, songwriter and pianist, best known for the 1974 hit “Let’s Straighten It Out,” died Aug. 22, 2026, at 86. (Lioneldecoster/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0)

Latimore, the singer, songwriter and pianist whose conversational baritone turned a relationship talk into the 1974 R&B classic “Let’s Straighten It Out,” died Aug. 22 at 86.

Malaco Records, his longtime label, confirmed his death in a social-media statement.

“We are deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Benjamin ‘Benny’ Latimore,” the Jackson, Mississippi-based label wrote, offering condolences to his family and loved ones.

A cause of death has not been publicly disclosed.

Born Benjamin William Lattimore in Charleston, Tennessee, Latimore grew up listening to gospel, blues and country music. He began playing his family’s piano as a child and sang his first solo in a Baptist church at 13, according to Malaco’s biography of the singer. He eventually moved to Miami and began recording for music entrepreneur Henry Stone’s Dade label before moving to Stone’s Glades imprint.

His version of T-Bone Walker’s “Stormy Monday” reached No. 27 on Billboard’s R&B chart in 1973. A year later came the record that would define his career.

Written by Latimore, “Let’s Straighten It Out” reached No. 1 on the R&B chart and crossed over to No. 31 on the Billboard Hot 100. He followed it with more R&B hits, including “Keep the Home Fire Burnin’” and “Somethin’ ’Bout ’Cha.”

Latimore signed with Malaco in 1982, beginning another substantial chapter of his career.

The move also placed him in the middle of an important shift in Black music. As major labels increasingly moved away from veteran soul performers, Malaco built a durable business recording artists whose audiences had not disappeared, including Z.Z. Hill, Denise LaSalle, Johnnie Taylor, Little Milton and Latimore.

Latimore remained active well beyond his 1970s chart run. He played piano on Joss Stone’s 2003 debut, The Soul Sessions, and her 2004 follow-up, Mind Body & Soul. In 2014, he sat in with the Roots on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.”

The Blues Foundation inducted Latimore into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2017, recognizing a career that resisted an easy genre label.

Latimore himself put it more simply in a 2017 interview with Blues Blast Magazine.

“I can’t say that I’m a blues singer, but I’m a singer who can sing the blues.”

Rap Pioneer Keith Keith Dies at 64

Funky 4 + 1 performs “That’s the Joint” on “Saturday Night Live” on Feb. 14, 1981. Keith Caesar, known as Keith Keith, was 18 when the pioneering Bronx group made the landmark television appearance. Caesar died Aug. 21, 2026, at 64. (Screengrab/NBC)

Keith Keith was 18 years old when hip-hop walked onto “Saturday Night Live” for the first time.

He would turn 19 the next day.

On Feb. 14, 1981, Blondie singer Debbie Harry introduced Funky 4 + 1 as some of “the best street rappers in the country.” Then Keith Keith and his Bronx crew launched into “That’s the Joint,” passing the microphone through a performance that became one of early hip-hop’s defining crossings from neighborhood culture to national television.

Keith Caesar, the pioneering MC known as Keith Keith, died Friday, Aug. 21, at 64, his family told News 12 The Bronx.

His family said he died from medical complications. No further details were announced.

Caesar was a lifelong Bronx resident and one of the original voices of a group whose list of firsts can sound almost impossible in retrospect.

Funky 4 + 1 is widely credited as the first hip-hop group to secure a record deal. It featured Sha-Rock, one of the culture’s foundational female MCs. And when the group appeared on “Saturday Night Live,” it became the first hip-hop group to perform on the program and, according to contemporary histories and later accounts, the first authentic Bronx hip-hop crew to perform live on national television.

None of that was inevitable when Caesar started rhyming.

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Sha-Rock has recalled that when she became an MC in the late 1970s, Keith Keith and K.K. Rockwell were already the two male MCs in the organization that would become the Funky 4. Rahiem joined soon afterward, completing an early version of the group before lineup changes brought in performers including Lil’ Rodney C and Jazzy Jeff.

These were not artists entering an established recording industry called hip-hop.

The infrastructure barely existed.

Their stages were parks, community centers, clubs and neighborhood parties. Flyers preserved by institutions including Harvard’s Hiphop Archive and the Smithsonian now read almost like archaeological documents from a culture that would eventually reshape popular music.

Keith Keith’s name is on those documents.

By 1979, Funky 4 + 1 had moved from the live Bronx circuit onto vinyl with “Rappin’ and Rocking the House” on Bobby Robinson’s Enjoy Records. Caesar shares a writing credit on the sprawling early rap record.

The group later joined Sylvia Robinson’s Sugar Hill Records and recorded the song that would become its signature.

“That’s the Joint” was different from a modern rap single in nearly every obvious way.

The original performance stretched for roughly nine minutes. Instead of centering one star, the record operated like a recorded version of a Bronx MC routine: voices traded off, joined together and handed momentum from one rapper to another.

Caesar was one of its credited writers.

Its influence lasted far beyond the group.

A 1980 Bronx flyer advertises a Funky Four Plus One More appearance and names Keith Keith among the pioneering group’s MCs. Keith Caesar, known professionally as Keith Keith, died Aug. 21 at 64. The flyer is held by the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. (Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture/Public Domain)

Decades later, Rolling Stone placed “That’s the Joint” among its 500 greatest songs of all time. Its DNA also traveled directly into later generations of hip-hop. The Dust Brothers drew from it while constructing the Beastie Boys’ sample-heavy “Paul’s Boutique,” including material heard on “Shake Your Rump” and “Shadrach.” Positive K’s 1992 hit “I Got a Man” also drew from the record.

That afterlife helps explain why Funky 4 + 1 occupies a strange but essential place in hip-hop history: Millions of people know music shaped by the group without necessarily knowing the names of the teenagers who made the original.

Debbie Harry did.

Her decision to bring Funky 4 + 1 onto “Saturday Night Live” was not a celebrity stunt built around a passing musical curiosity.

Harry and Blondie guitarist Chris Stein had spent time around New York’s emerging hip-hop scene. Years later, Harry identified “That’s the Joint” with what she described as her hip-hop epiphany, recalling the impact of seeing DJs scratching and rappers performing at an event in the South Bronx.

When Harry hosted “Saturday Night Live” on Valentine’s Day 1981, she used part of the episode to put that music in front of a national audience.

Funky 4 + 1 took the stage.

For Caesar, the date carried an accidental bit of symmetry that becomes more striking now: He was born Feb. 15, 1962.

The kid helping introduce hip-hop to much of television America was performing on the final night of his 18th year.

Sha-Rock has said the group did not fully understand what it had accomplished at the time. They were already known around New York through performances and tapes circulating from neighborhood to neighborhood.

National television was something else.

Years later, she remembered what it meant to “have the entire world hear us rhyming.”

It is difficult to watch that performance now without seeing everything that came after it.

Run-DMC had not released a record. LL Cool J was still a child. “Yo! MTV Raps” was years away. There was no Grammy category for rap, no hip-hop radio format stretching across the country and no guarantee that the music being created in the Bronx would become a permanent part of American culture.

Keith Keith was already on the microphone.

The group’s recording career was relatively brief. Funky 4 + 1 never made the kind of studio-album catalog later generations would use to measure rap careers, and its members eventually moved in different directions.

But longevity is not the only way to measure importance.

Some artists dominate an era.

Others help create one.

Grandmaster Flash, another architect of the Bronx scene, responded to Caesar’s death by placing him firmly in the latter category.

In a Facebook tribute, Flash called Caesar “one of our originators from the beginning of the culture.” He said he had seen him recently and was stunned by the news.

“You will not be forgotten,” Flash said.

For Keith Keith, the historical record gives those words weight.

Before hip-hop became an industry, he was on the flyers.

Before rap television had a format, he was on national television.

And before the world knew where hip-hop was going, Keith Keith was already there.

Prosecutors Tell Jury Keffe D Planned Tupac Shakur Shooting

​Duane "Keffe D" Davis, shown in this booking photograph provided by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Davis is standing trial on murder charges in connection with the 1996 killing of rapper Tupac Shakur.

The prosecution of the only man ever charged in Tupac Shakur’s killing opened Monday with an unusual concession.

Duane “Keffe D” Davis is not accused of firing the gun.

The state’s case is that he did not have to.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal told jurors that Davis organized the Sept. 7, 1996, attack as retaliation after Shakur and members of his entourage beat Davis’ nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, at the MGM Grand.

“Duane Davis did not pull the trigger. But he did plan the shooting,” Palal told jurors.

Davis, 63, has pleaded not guilty to murder with a deadly weapon with the intent to promote, further or assist a criminal gang. He could face life in prison if convicted.

Prosecutors say Davis spent roughly two hours after the casino fight arranging revenge, obtained a gun and joined three other men in a white Cadillac searching for Shakur and Death Row Records co-founder Marion “Suge” Knight.

The Cadillac eventually pulled alongside the black BMW Knight was driving near the Las Vegas Strip. Shakur was struck multiple times and died six days later at 25. Knight survived with a minor wound.

Police have never established publicly which man in the Cadillac fired the shots.

That question is important historically, but it is not necessarily the question jurors have to answer.

Under Nevada law, prosecutors can seek a murder conviction against someone accused of knowingly taking part in the crime even if that person did not personally pull the trigger. Prosecutors contend Davis supplied the weapon and participated in planning and carrying out the attack.

Much of their case will depend on something investigators did not have in 1996: years of statements from Davis himself.

Davis has discussed the shooting in interviews, with investigators and in his 2019 memoir, “Compton Street Legend.” Prosecutors played portions of his recorded statements Monday and displayed the book for jurors.

In those accounts, Davis placed himself in the front passenger seat of the Cadillac and described handing a gun to the men sitting behind him.

The other three men investigators have linked to the Cadillac — Anderson, Deandrae “Freaky” Smith and Terry “Bubble Up” Brown — have all died.

Davis is the only surviving alleged occupant.

That has made his public storytelling unusually important to a case that went nearly three decades without a prosecution. Police have said Davis was long considered a suspect but that his later statements helped revive an investigation that had gone cold.

Defense attorney Michael Sanft told jurors those statements are not the equivalent of proof.

Sanft challenged investigators for what he described as incomplete work and missing documentation and argued that Davis made claims in interviews and his book that law enforcement never independently verified.

“What they are telling you ... is really fiction,” Sanft told the jury.

Sanft’s name is confirmed by AP’s pretrial reporting, Las Vegas local coverage and court photography; a Reuters version of Monday’s story rendered the surname differently.

The first witnesses Monday took jurors back to the hours surrounding the shooting.

Retired Las Vegas police Officer Garry Dale testified that he and another officer stopped Knight’s BMW because it did not have a license plate. Shakur was riding with him.

The officers issued a warning and let them continue.

About 10 minutes later, Dale responded to the shooting and found emergency personnel removing Shakur from the BMW.

Former Las Vegas homicide detective Brent Becker described investigators’ difficulty getting witnesses to cooperate.

Ingrid Stokes, who was riding in another vehicle nearby, testified that she heard gunshots while stopped near Knight’s BMW. Her group sped away and nearly collided with a white four-door vehicle, she said.

Stokes testified that fear of retaliation and distrust of police made her reluctant to become involved.

Members of Shakur’s family, including his stepbrother Maurice “Mopreme” Shakur, were in the courtroom as prosecutors played Davis’ recorded statements.

The trial comes nearly 30 years after Shakur’s death and almost three years after a Clark County grand jury indicted Davis in 2023.

For decades, discussion of Shakur’s killing sprawled across books, documentaries, interviews and competing theories about who was responsible.

The criminal trial is considerably narrower.

Jurors do not have to resolve every question that has surrounded Tupac’s death since 1996.

They have to decide whether prosecutors can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Davis participated in arranging the killing — or whether, as the defense argues, the state has built its case around stories that cannot be trusted.

Nine Years After Nipsey Hussle and Bino Rideaux Recorded it, ‘Prolific’ is Ready

The cover of “Prolific,” the collaborative album from Nipsey Hussle and Bino Rideaux, due Aug. 14, 2026. Hussle selected the photograph used for the artwork while the pair were working on the project in 2017. (All Money In/Out The Blue/Atlantic Records)

Posthumous albums often come with an unavoidable question: How much of what listeners are hearing did the artist actually choose?

“Prolific,” the new Nipsey Hussle and Bino Rideaux album arriving Friday, comes with an unusually clear answer.

Hussle and Rideaux recorded the music together during an intensive three-month stretch in 2017, nearly two years before Hussle’s death. They also sequenced the project during his lifetime, and Hussle personally selected the photograph that became its cover, according to a Los Angeles Times interview published Wednesday with Rideaux and Hussle’s older brother, Samiel “Blacc Sam” Asghedom.

The 15-track “Prolific” is scheduled for release Aug. 14 by All Money In & Out The Blue Records under exclusive license to Atlantic Recording Corp. The date falls one day before what would have been Hussle’s 41st birthday.

For Hussle’s family, the long delay was intentional.

Asghedom, his brother’s longtime business partner and estate administrator, told the Times that people began pressing the family to release unreleased Nipsey music after the rapper’s death in 2019.

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He resisted.

“When we drop the music, we gotta feel like it’s the right time,” Asghedom told the newspaper.

The distinction matters because “Prolific” is not being presented as an album constructed years later from unrelated Nipsey verses.

Its foundation was already there.

Hussle and Rideaux began working together in 2016 after Hussle heard Rideaux’s music and invited the younger South Los Angeles artist to his studio. Two songs from that early session appeared on Hussle’s “Slauson Boy 2,” and the partnership grew into their 2017 collaborative mixtape “No Pressure.”

That same year, Hussle rented NoName Studios in Tarzana where he and Rideaux effectively moved in for about 90 days.

They slept there. They showered there. Producers and engineers rotated through. Music was made constantly.

During those sessions, the pair worked on “No Pressure” and the body of music that would eventually become “Prolific.” Rideaux described the atmosphere to the Times as part frat house, part summer camp, with the studio operating around the clock.

That history also requires one important qualification.

Although the recordings and sequencing date to Hussle’s lifetime, Asghedom has previously estimated that the project was about 80% finished when his brother died. The team later did finishing work using unreleased verses and other music Hussle had already recorded with Rideaux.

That is different from saying nothing was touched after 2019.

It is also different from constructing a new album around orphaned vocals.

Asghedom has repeatedly drawn that distinction, describing “Prolific” as a project Hussle deliberately created with Rideaux rather than a collection assembled by the estate after his death.

Even the artwork predates the tragedy.

Hussle chose a blue-tinted photograph showing him and Rideaux with friends at the Hollywood Roosevelt, a hotel they frequented while making the project. The album carried another name during the original sessions; the team later settled on “Prolific,” taking the title from the word Hussle famously had tattooed on his right temple.

The completed track list also reaches well beyond the two Los Angeles rappers.

Guests include Cardi B, Ty Dolla $ign, Leon Thomas, James Fauntleroy, Buddy and BH. The 15-song album includes the previously released “Reckless” featuring Static Major, “Sacrifices” featuring Fauntleroy, “All Summer” featuring BH and “I Just Wanna Know” with Cardi B and Ty Dolla $ign.

Several producers involved with “Prolific” also worked on Hussle’s 2018 major-label debut, “Victory Lap,” including Mike & Keys and Larrance “Rance 1500” Dopson.

Musically, Rideaux told the Times that “Prolific” is more vulnerable and experimental than “No Pressure.” Relationships play a larger role in the subject matter, and the production sometimes moves beyond the West Coast palette most closely associated with Hussle. One song, “Miami Off the Plane,” uses a Caribbean riddim-inspired beat, a sound Rideaux said neither artist had previously explored.

The experimentation adds another dimension to music Hussle was making as he prepared for the breakthrough that would come with “Victory Lap.”

Hussle, born Ermias Asghedom, was fatally shot outside his Marathon Clothing store in South Los Angeles on March 31, 2019. He was 33.

By then, “Victory Lap” had transformed years of independent momentum into mainstream recognition. The album earned a Grammy nomination for best rap album, and Hussle won two Grammys posthumously in 2020: best rap performance for “Racks in the Middle” and best melodic rap performance for his appearance on DJ Khaled’s “Higher.”

Recordings featuring Hussle have surfaced since his death, including his 2021 collaboration with Jay-Z, “What It Feels Like,” from “Judas and the Black Messiah: The Inspired Album.” But his estate has been notably restrained about turning his unreleased recordings into a full posthumous project.

That restraint is part of what makes “Prolific” notable.

Rather than rushing an album into the market while attention surrounding Hussle’s death was at its peak, his family waited more than seven years — and nearly nine years after the sessions themselves — before deciding this particular body of work was ready to be heard.

Rideaux, now 33 himself, told the Times he understands that releasing music involving an artist as revered as Hussle invites scrutiny. He also made clear that carrying forward what his mentor began has become inseparable from his own career.

The album arrives Friday, Aug. 14.

One day later, Nipsey Hussle would have turned 41.

After years of saying no to pressure for a posthumous album, his family is finally saying yes to one Hussle had already helped shape.