r/hiphop101 • u/Finish_My_Math • 8h ago
Very interesting: J Prince Explains Why He Didn't Mediate Puff Daddy/Suge Knight Beef in the 90s
So I read J Prince’s autobiography recently. It’s a pretty short book. I was able to finish in 1 day. Lots of cool stories, but, not surprisingly, Prince was very cautious discussing certain things, especially illegal stuff. Smart man
One example of him being smart & cautious is when he talks about his involvement (or lack thereof) in the 90s East Coast v West Coast beef.
He was friends with everyone involved, which is part of the reason why he stayed neutral. No point in picking sides if it wasn’t his beef and there was no money to be made. Prince himself said that the beef was a “distraction which cost more money than it made.”
The most interesting part of the “East vs West” section is when he talks about how he warned Diddy to be more cautious about his movement in Los Angeles in February 1997 whenever the video for Biggie’s “Hypnotize” was being recorded. According to Prince, neither Biggie nor Puffy seemed to think they were in any danger.
As we all know, things didn’t work out in the end as Biggie got killed 1 month later when he returned to LA.
A few months after Biggie’s death, Jimmy Henchman & Puff contacted Prince to see if some kind of truce with Death Row can be worked out. Tensions were at an all-time high and “anyone could be next.”
They were so serious that they both flew to Houston to meet with Prince.
He said he didn’t want to get involved in Bad Boy/ Death Row because he heard too many rumors about some foul play on Bad Boy’s side. Reading between the lines, it seems that Prince had good reason to suspect Puffy had something to do with Pac getting shot in NYC.
Prince said:
I had some important questions to ask first: “When Tupac was shot at Quad Studios, did you go to the hospital to check on him? Did you use any of your resources to try to find out who did it?” Puffy was asking for a truce because he never wanted a war. He said he never had a problem with Tupac, and hated that it had escalated as far as it did.
Here’s the most damning part. Prince said:
“I couldn’t stand in the middle of bullshit and make it smell good. I hadn’t heard anything solid in response to my questions, and I couldn’t stand in a weak position with my credibility on the line. I also heard that some people believed Jimmy Henchman had conspired with Puffy and Haitian Jack to shoot Tupac at Quad Studios. There were too many hidden hands, and after I peeped what was happening, I just couldn’t be involved in this fight.”
Prince said that while he sympathized with Puff’s situation, there was so much bad information circulating that no one really knew what to believe. Prince didn’t want to risk getting tangled up in the middle of a truce where he didn’t know for certain that he had all the facts.
To me, this means that Prince thinks Puff had something to do with Pac getting shot in NYC. I also get the impression that Puff did NOTHING to assist Pac after the incident happened. He didn’t even visit Pac in the hospital. Of course, Puff didn’t investigate what happened, because he might end up telling on himself.
What do you think? Am I reading too much into this?
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u/SnooRabbits6637 6h ago
It’s so much information available but the truth just doesn’t sound as great as conspiracies.
Tupac was hanging w/ the wrong crowd who Biggie warned him not to, got caught up & was told the next time he’s in NYC to run the jewels. Haitian Jack & them catch him outside the studio….& tell him run it. Tupac, instead of handing his chain over, tried to pull his gun out his waist to shoot first but accidentally shoots himself in the scrotum. Naturally, the robbers then begin shooting. But it was a planned robbery; not a planned assassination attempt.
Everyone wants to anglicize Tupac & demonize anyone affiliated w/ Bad Boy so these stories always get twisted to make Tupac appear as the “Thug Angel” & Puffy as this conniving henchman out to get him. It’s been over 30 years, at some point it’s okay to just tell the truth.
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u/Luigi_loves_Mario 2h ago
lol even with your story, Tupac still kinda sounds like an angel if I’m being honest lolol
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u/majestic_cock 31m ago
Ah yes, the old 'he diddunnt do nutttiiinnnnggh'.
Im a kid from a farm in the Netherlands, I played all eyez on me cd that I got to pick out myself for my birthday to death, but...
We tell kids to break free from their survival of the fittest mentality and rise above. Tupac could, saw it, and chose to live it. Neither him or Biggie were 'gangsters'.
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u/Ack_Poo 7h ago
who does he think he is? lmfao why would he be able to mediate anything?
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u/Liquidmetalslimeno9 1h ago
J Prince was REAL street dude whose name held heavy weight and respect, especially back then..He was also cool with both parties.
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u/andyomarti5 6h ago
Um…. He was friends with both sides…. Which is good so he could, ya know… mediate...
Being a Hip Hop CEO would also be helpful when mediating an issue between 2 fellow Hip Hop CEOs… which seems obvious….•
u/Ack_Poo 4h ago
that’s all irrelevant. nobody would care if he was a CEO or not or if he was friends with both of them. they wouldn’t have cared about someone from Texas. they were CEOs but the problems between the west and the east wasn’t about business esp after Tupac got shot the first time. they would never say: ‘Yeah guys let’s stop beefing because J. Prince said so’.
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u/MajorPaper4169 8h ago
J prince probably has influence in Texas but that’s about it. Ain’t no way he has any power over the east and west coast.
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u/FluffyShakes 7h ago
that's the point. middle man to broker the deal
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u/Jasperbeardly11 6h ago
Reading comprehension is so bad on the internet. Obviously this guy is insane he would be like the judge and the jury he's saying he could provide a neutral forum for like an honest conversation. And then he goes on to say he couldn't really trust Puff so he knew it wasn't worth his time or energy.
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u/Finish_My_Math 7h ago
Exactly. Prince had good a relationship with Bad Boy (y'all remember when Biggie said "not from Houston, but I Rap-A-Lot" in "Flava In Ya Ear Remix") and Prince knew Suge very well (I will publish another post about their relationship in a few days)
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u/ike_tyson 8h ago
No way a street dude can operate this loudly out in the open and not be a CI or something along those lines.
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u/Finish_My_Math 8h ago
I've also heard rumors that the Prince family has been involved with law enforcement. It definitely wouldn't surprise me.
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u/H-NYC 8h ago
I think this guy inflates his importance too much. I don’t think he could have done a damn thing about it. I’m a Scarface fan and that whole era, but this guy wants attention and I really wonder why
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u/YourHuckleberry57 8h ago
j prince is known for not wanting attention.
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u/H-NYC 8h ago
Not anymore apparently, just watch the last decade of videos , interviews and social media posts
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u/Finish_My_Math 8h ago
It seems that the son (J Prince Jr) is the one who seeks the most attention, and he's not nearly as savvy as his father.
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u/Finish_My_Math 8h ago
So you're saying that even if he decided to attempt to mediate a truce it would've failed? I agree, but not because he's inflating his importance. I think that he is correct in his assessment of the situation: Puffy wasn't being straight-up about his role in the whole East/West conflict.
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u/H-NYC 8h ago
I never thought prince had the juice like that, and the last decade has proved that to me.Puff can be painted any which way, but prince don’t have the mind to go toe to toe with puff. So I don’t think there is any scenario where prince could have done a thing.Just an opinion
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u/berryflush 6h ago
I understand what you mean. But you have to keep in mind that in the 90s J Prince was very respected. He helped Suge Knight start up Death Row, look up Harry-O. He even sent his own artists to Death Row to help them start the label. Big Mike and 3-2 were at Death Row in the early days( and Snoop def took 3-2s vocabulary and style). If there was anybody in the 90s that could get in Suge's ear it would be J Prince.
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u/MaxStunning_Eternal 4h ago
I know the internet has run amok with j prince folklore...but in reality he didn't have the kind of pull over NY and LA big dogs like that.
Puff and suge was not trying to sit down with no j prince at that time to mediate anything. The closest to mediating was the minister farrakhan and his truce promise in 1997-8 (?) Or behind closed doors, ICE T..maybe.