After five years behind bars, rap music mogul Marion
“Suge” Knight is back in Los Angeles and at the helm of Death Row Records,
the company he founded.
The burly founder of Death Row walked out of a Portland, Ore., prison
yesterday morning and hopped on a plane headed for Los Angeles, the Los
Angeles Times reported.
“I’m stress-free,” said Knight in a phone interview hours after being
released. “I’m not bitter. I’m blessed. I’m glad to be out. I give thanks to
God. I want to try to do better things. You know what they say: ‘Demonstration
is better than conversation.’ Watch me. I’m going to the studio tonight.”
After landing at Los Angeles International Airport, the 6-foot-3, 315-pound
entrepreneur went to his company’s Los Angeles headquarters on Wilshire
Boulevard, at the edge of Beverly Hills.
For the last week, the label’s office has been dwarfed by a giant billboard
overhead bearing Knight’s image and the words: “Welcome Home Suge.”
The rap kingpin has been incarcerated since October 1996 when a judge
determined that he had violated his probation by kicking a man during a
scuffle at a Las Vegas hotel.
The violation stemmed from a 1992 assault case for which he had been placed
on state probation after attacking two rappers at a Hollywood recording
studio.
Knight, 36, became famous in the early 1990s for running a small, cutting-
edge record label that introduced the world to West Coast rap, launching the
solo careers of such stars as Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur.
The first hard-core rap label to achieve mainstream success, Death Row and
its stars earned as much notoriety for their controversial lyrics as for their
constant run-ins with the law.
And Knight himself was dogged by rumors of violent behavior even before he
ended up in prison on an assault probation violation.
Although Death Row has lost some of its stars, the company is expected to
score a Top 20 hit on the pop chart this week with a new collection from Tha
Dogg Pound.
During Knight’s incarceration, the label signed up a new pack of unknown
acts including Crooked I, SKG, the Realest, Doobie and Swoop G.
