Suge Knight



Marion Hugh "Suge" Knight Jr. (born April 19, 1965) is the co-founder and CEO of Death Row Records. He was sentenced to 28 years in prison in September 2018 after pleading no contest to voluntary manslaughter in a fatal 2015 hit-and-run. The former football star played defensive end for the Los Angeles Rams during the player strike in 1987.

Life
Marion Hugh Knight Jr. was the son of Maxine (née Dikemen) and Marion Knight Sr. and was born in Compton, California. Suge (pronounced Shuug) gets his name from his childhood nickname "Sugar Bear." He went to Lynwood High School in nearby Lynwood, where he excelled in football and track.

Knight found work as a concert promoter and bodyguard for celebrities such as Bobby Brown after leaving the NFL. He founded his own music publishing company in 1989. Vanilla Ice (Robert Van Winkle) agreed to sign over royalties from his hit "Ice Ice Ice Baby" for his first big profit.

Death Row Records
N.W.A manager Jerry Heller claims that members of the group threatened him with lead pipes and baseball bats if he did not release Dre, The D.O.C., and Michel'le from their contracts. Dre and D.O.C. co-founded Death Row Records with Knight in 1991, with the goal of making it "the Motown of the '90s." Dre's solo debut album, The Chronic, was certified triple platinum by the end of 1993.

Death Row rapper Snoop Dogg has been in the spotlight for a long time, but his relationship with civil rights activist Delores Tucker has been strained. Tucker's criticism of Death Row's glamorization of the "gangsta" lifestyle in 1995 may have contributed to the demise of a lucrative deal with Time Warner.

Knight's feud with East Coast entrepreneur Sean Combs began in August 1995, when he insulted the Bad Boy label founder on air at the Source Awards. The same year, Knight offered to post bail for Tupac Shakur (US$1.4 million) if the rapper agreed to sign with Death Row. Shakur agreed, paving the way for his double album All Eyez on Me and The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory, released in 1996.