Jun 19, 2011 at 10:30 am by Jenn

Biggie and Tupac - airbrush

On Wednesday, prison inmate Dexter Isaac confessed to the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur. He alleges that he was hired by another conspirator, music producer James “Jimmy Henchmen” Rosemond, to gun Tupac down.

But if you’re a foreigner—or a kid—maybe you don’t know who Tupac is! Never fear: Next Media is here to help.

You’ve heard of Next Media Animation, haven’t you? That’s the Taiwanese studio that reenacts current news stories—using bleeding-edge computer-rendered graphics—for Chinese news. The studio first achieved notoriety last summer with an animation of Tiger Woods’ car crash.

(LOL at bizarro-skinny Biggie Smalls.)

While Dexter Isaac’s confession is suspect—he also implicates Diddy, and he’s likely trying to shave some time off that life sentence he’s already serving—a federal grand jury apparently trusts Isaac’s information enough to charge two of Jimmy Henchmen’s friends with the 2009 shooting death of Lowell Fletcher, a friend of 50 Cent.

P.S. Oops! How embarrassing. Though a hit on Tupac’s life was first attempted in 1994, he wasn’t murdered until 1996. I’ve corrected the year, above. Sorry, and thanks!

Jan 07, 2011 at 11:30 am by Emily

A photo of Notorious B.I.G.

Another hint:  if you didn’t get that hint in the title, you’re probably not going to care about this news.

For those of you living in your sweet cave with the WiFi, the Notorious B.I.G. was shot and killed back in 1997.  Thanks to some pretty successful dickin’ around (conspiracy theories are welcome in the comments), the case was never solved.  Well, hold on to your hats, you guys, because here we go again.

From CNN:

“A task force made up of local and federal law enforcement agencies is actively pursuing leads into the 1997 slaying of hip hop artist Christopher Wallace … According to one law enforcement source, the investigation into the 13-year-old unsolved case was ‘reinvigorated’ months ago as a result of new information, but the source would not elaborate further because of the ongoing investigation that includes the Los Angeles Police Department, L.A. County District Attorney’s Office and the FBI.”

Did you catch that last part?  The FBI.  They got involved for, like, a year back in 2004, but then I guess they had to investigate some talcum powder in an envelope or something and closed their case.  But that doesn’t matter now, because now they’re in it to win it, and we better finally see some justice for Biggie (East Coast represent).

Ok, I want to know three things from you guys:  who do you believe killed Biggie (I think I’m going to go with Voldemort), what’s your favorite Biggie song (“Hypnotize” for sure), and who’s better, Biggie or Tupac (does it discredit this entire post if I say Tupac?).  Now you go.