Marion “Suge” Knight claims that friends and relatives of Tupac Shakur rolled the rapper’s cremated ashes into several blunts and smoked them in a Las Vegas hotel room shortly after his death in 1996.
The former Death Row Records CEO, speaking from prison in a recent interview, said Shakur’s mother Afeni Shakur directed the gathering after she pushed for an immediate cremation. Knight said he paid a funeral home worker $1.2 million in cash to carry it out that same night.
Knight, 60, is serving a 28-year sentence at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego for voluntary manslaughter in the 2015 hit-and-run death of Terry Carter. He was driving the black BMW in which Shakur was shot on Sept. 7, 1996, after a Mike Tyson fight in Las Vegas. Shakur, 25, was pronounced dead at University Medical Center of Southern Nevada on Sept. 13, 1996.
According to Knight, Afeni Shakur told him to arrange the cremation right away. He contacted a funeral home worker late that evening who initially refused because of other commitments. Knight said he went to the man’s house with two bags of cash, first offering $200,000. When that was turned down, he put both bags on the table for a total of $1.2 million. The worker then agreed to cremate Shakur that night.
Knight said Afeni Shakur later invited people to her Las Vegas hotel room. A bag of the ashes was passed around, and participants rolled portions into blunts and smoked them.
“His homies rolled him up. They smoked him,”
Knight recalled in an earlier interview.
“You gotta understand, that’s what made sense. It was symbolic. It’s like… you keep part of him.”
Knight said he declined to join. He was on probation at the time and told Afeni he could not risk a violation.
“I was so happy to say I was on probation — I couldn’t smoke,”
he said.
“I told his mother, ‘Moms, I’d love to, but if I hit that, I’ll get in trouble.’ I was probably the only one who didn’t hit him.”
Afeni Shakur, a former Black Panther and the executor of her son’s estate, died in 2016 at age 69. Knight has given similar accounts of the ashes in separate interviews over the past year, including one published in July 2025. No independent confirmation of the ritual has been reported.
The claims surface as Duane “Keefe D” Davis stands trial in Las Vegas on charges related to Shakur’s killing. Knight has said Davis was not the only person involved.
Knight co-founded Death Row Records with Dr. Dre and signed Shakur to the label. He has a long record of legal troubles that includes prior convictions for assault and other charges. His earliest parole eligibility is listed as October 2034.
Shakur remains one of the most influential figures in hip-hop. His mother established the Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation after his death and oversaw the release of posthumous work through Amaru Entertainment.
