Biggie & Tupac

Biggie & Tupac
DVD Cover for Biggie & Tupac
Directed by	Nick Broomfield
Produced by	Nick Broomfield Michele D'Acosta
Starring	Biggie Smalls (archive footage) Tupac Shakur (archive footage) Nick Broomfield Russell Poole Voletta Wallace Billy Garland David Hicken Suge Knight
Music by	Christian Henson
Cinematography	Joan Churchill
Edited by	Mark Atkins Jaime Estrada Torres
Distributed by	Roxie Releasing Lions Gate Entertainment
Release date	January 11, 2002
Running time	108 min.
Language	English

Biggie & Tupac is a 2002 feature-length documentary film about murdered rappers Christopher "Notorious B.I.G." Wallace and Tupac "2Pac" Shakur by Nick Broomfield. Broomfield suggests the two murders were planned by Suge Knight, head of Death Row Records. Collusion by the LAPD is also implied.

While the film remains inconclusive, when asked "Who killed Tupac?" in a BBC Radio interview dated March 7, 2005, Broomfield stated (quoting Snoop Dogg) "The big guy next to him in the car... Suge Knight."

Broomfield's low-budget documentary was as the New York Times described it, a "largely speculative" and "circumstantial" account relying on flimsy evidence, failing to "present counter-evidence" or "question sources." The movie alleged that Knight had Tupac killed before he could part ways with Knight's Death Row label and conspired to kill Biggie to divert attention from himself in the Tupac murder. As The Courant noted:

Broomfield's interview subjects aren't the most credible bunch. They include bounty hunter and ex-con Kevin Hackie, an ex-LAPD officer [Russell Poole on whose theory Broomfield's film is built] who talks about mysterious documents that never turn up; Mark Hyland, known for some reason as the Bookkeeper, who is in prison awaiting trial on 37 counts of impersonating a lawyer when he tells Broomfield that he was present when Knight and crooked cops arranged a hit on Biggie; and Biggie's mother, friends and bodyguard, who obviously have no reason to present Wallace as anything less than a hip-hop martyr.

Moreover, the motive suggested for the murder of Biggie (as in the Russell Poole theory on which it relied) -- to decrease suspicion for the Shakur shooting six months earlier—was, as The New York Times phrased it, "unsupported in the film."

Broomfield's documentary was based on the theory and interviews of ex-detective Russelle Poole. Poole claimed that the L.A.P.D. conspired to cover up Suge Knight's conspiracy to kill Tupac and Biggie. The documentary shows Poole to have been forced out of his position as an L.A. P.D. detective for independently pursuing a theory considered threadbare by his colleagues and superiors. Russell Poole suspected ex-cop David Mack, and Amir Muhammed (a mortgage broker with no plausible connection to the case) to have worked with Suge Knight to kill Biggie.