Why has the investigation into Tupac’s death been reopened?

On September 7, 1996, the rapper Tupac Shakur was gunned down in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas, dying six days later as a result of his four gunshot wounds. No arrests or convictions have ever been made in the case, with police claiming uncooperative witnesses were the reason it remained unsolved.

Now, almost 27 years since the celebrated musician’s death, Nevada state authorities have reopened the case. On Tuesday, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department confirmed that this week a search warrant was issued in connection to the rapper’s 1996 murder. The warrant was issued in Henderson, Nevada’s second-largest city, 16 miles southeast of Las Vegas. At the moment it’s not clearly understood who or what the LVMPD was looking for, however it’s worth noting that there is no statute of limitations for murder cases in the state of Nevada.

Tupac became a central figure in West Coast hip hop from the release of his debut album 2Pacalypse Now in 1991. The rapper released 3 more albums in 1993, 1995 and 1996 respectively, and recorded another in August 1996 before his death in September. This album, The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory, was then released posthumously under the stage name Makaveli. Since then several more albums have been released posthumously, and the rapper has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, despite being only 25 when he was killed.

In 2002, the journalist Randall Sullivan released LAbyrinth, a book that implicated the Los Angeles Police Department in the death of both Tupac and Notorious B.I.G., who was killed in LA six months after Tupac. Sullivan’s book used LAPD detective Russell Poole as its primary source and was adapted into the 2018 film City of Lies starring Forrest Whittaker. When we spoke to Sullivan about LAbyrinth’s follow-up, he told us that he didn’t think either murder will be solved “unless the pressure mounts”, adding, “I’m hoping that the combination of this book and the City of Lies movie, being released close together, will shine a bright enough light on the LAPD to compel them to explain some things.”

Revisit our 2019 interview with Sullivan, where he talks about the continued police cover up, suspects from Tupac’s inner circle, and why the rapper’s death remains at the forefront of popular culture.

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