Hip Hop Mogul James Rosemond Confesses to Setting Tupac Up to Be Shot in 1994

Reason4Rhymes.com Staff

Hip-hop mogul James Rosemond (alias Jimmy Henchman), who was recently charged with orchestrating the murder of an accomplice of 50 Cent, is now implicated in the November 1994 non-fatal shooting of rap legend Tupac Shakur—a charge to which he confessed earlier this month.

According to The Village Voice, Rosemond admitted to being involved in the shooting in one of the nine “Queen for a Day” sessions held by the federal government last Fall. Such sessions allow individuals under investigation to admit to knowledge of certain crimes in exchange for an agreement that the admissions will not be used to prosecute them. Rosemond confessed in hopes of getting a reduced sentence on one of his pending charges.

This is a private reversal of a very public campaign against reporter Chuck Philips, who accused Rosemond of setting up the incident in 2008. Crime investigation website TheSmokingGun.com revealed one of Philips’s sources, a series of FBI documents, to be forgeries. This led to a “rare” four-page retraction from the LA Times, and seemed to disprove the theory until Dexter Isaac, who carried out the attack, confessed to acting on Rosemond’s orders. Philips has since asked for an apology from the Times.

While the shooting was not fatal, the attack is often cited as the event that sparked the East Coast/West Coast rap war, a bitter rivalry that permanently changed the hip-hop world and led to the deaths of Shakur and East Coast rapper The Notorious B.I.G.