In 1995, Tupac Shakur was locked up. The soon-to-be legendary West Coast rapper had been convicted

of sexual assault, and in February of that year he had been sentenced to between a year

and a half and four years of hard time. Shakur always maintained his innocence in the case,

but would later admit to Vive magazine that he had been in the room when the crime was committed

and didn't stop the rape when he could have. He would tell the magazine, quote,

�I had a job to protect her, and I never showed up��

end quote. That dark and regrettable moment that led to Tupac's incarceration was somehow

not the worst thing he was involved in that year. In 1994, Tupac was gunned down in New York after

a robbery turned violent. The shooting happened just outside of Quad recording studios in Manhattan,

where Shakur was scheduled to record with the equally legendary Biggie Smalls and his crew,

Junior Mafia. While Tupac would survive the attack, those who were close to him would remember

the shooting as a turning point in his life. Tupac became convinced that the robbery and subsequent

attack had been a setup orchestrated by East Coast rappers that he had once considered his friends.

In his mind, the people behind the shooting were clearly Sean Puff Daddy Combs, and most

heartbreakingly, the notorious B.I.G. himself. Shakur's conspiratorial state of mind wasn't helped by

the fact that just a few days after the attack, he was found guilty of sexual assault, and a few

months later he was sentenced to up to four years in Reikers Island Penitentiary. The same month

that Tupac was incarcerated, Biggie Smalls dropped the notorious track, Who Shot You?

A song that Tupac interpreted as a veiled admission from Biggie that he had been behind his shooting

and was proud of it. For his part, Biggie would always deny this and insisted that the track

had been written and recorded months before Tupac was shot. Still, the timing of the release was

insensitive at best and downright suspicious at worst. It was during this period, when Tupac was

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