Suge Knight says Tupac Shakur didn’t want to be cremated but was anyway—and according to him, some of the late rapper’s closest friends honored him in a way that’s as unconventional as it is unforgettable: they rolled his ashes into a blunt and smoked them.
Speaking from prison in a new interview with PEOPLE, Knight described the chaotic aftermath of Shakur’s death and the pressure he says he faced from Tupac’s mother, Afeni Shakur, to handle the cremation immediately.
“She came up to me and said, ‘Get it done. Now,'” Knight recalled.
Knight said he initially pushed back, claiming Tupac had expressed clear wishes just weeks before his death.
“He didn’t want to be cremated,” Knight said. But Afeni wasn’t having it. “She started cussing me out,” he said. “She told me, ‘Get this s### done!'”
Knight said he followed through. “I paid someone a million dollars cash to take care of it.”
What happened next, according to Knight, was something straight out of Hip-Hop folklore.
“A bag with his ashes was passed around,” he said. “His homies rolled him up. They smoked him.”
Knight described the act as symbolic. “You gotta understand, that’s what made sense,” he said. “It was symbolic. It’s like… you keep part of him.”
Knight said he was there for the moment but didn’t join in. “I was so happy to say I was on probation — I couldn’t smoke,” he claimed. “I told his mother, ‘Moms, I’d love to, but if I hit that, I’ll get in trouble.'” He added, “I was probably the only one who didn’t hit him.”
Suge Knights Speaks Out On Tupac Shakur’s Death In 1996 Interview
Tupac was shot on September 7, 1996, while riding in the passenger seat of a BMW driven by Knight after a Mike Tyson fight in Las Vegas.
A gunman in a white Cadillac opened fire, hitting Shakur four times. Knight was grazed by bullet fragments but survived. Tupac died six days later, on September 13, at age 25.