Just like that, we’re now five episodes deep into Suge Knight‘s new, controversial podcast Collect Call. Released on Saturday (December 2), the new episode titled California Love discusses Tupac’s 1995 hit song as well as the people behind the scenes. Knight identifies who was and was not loyal to the now-deceased artist.
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How It Came Together
As his first topic discussed with co-host Dave Mays on Episode 5, Knight got straight to business. When opening up about “California Love,” which included feature appearances from Dr. Dre and Roger Troutman, Knight said that he did not earn the credit he deserved for orchestrating the song.
“If you’ve seen ‘California Love’ on a commercial or playing at a football game, that’s just like diamond money, blood money at the end of the day,” he said. “When they went to Africa and killed those motherf**kin’ Africans for those diamonds, what’s the difference? I did all the work. And my writers wrote all the songs. And I’m the one who put Roger Troutman on that song and paid this motherf**ker $200,000 to make it happen.”
Expanding on this, Knight noted that the song was mostly written by a Death Row Records affiliate named J-Flexx and that he gave the song to Tupac instead of Dr. Dre because Dre hardly ever put out studio albums.
Additionally, Knight alluded to the idea that Dre and Snoop Dogg were never even that fond of Pac in the first place, and that Snoop may have played a part in Pac’s death. He first introduced this as a possibility in Collect Call Episode 4 but used it to support his argument here that the men still performing “California Love” have no loyalty to Pac.
“You think the people [are] supposed to benefit off of Tupac [that] had something to do with his killing? Or who didn’t like him? What type of shit is that?” he asked rhetorically. “Most of [the people performing at the Super Bowl], at least we know two of ’em, hated Pac. And at the same time, since I wouldn’t sell my company, since they couldn’t take my company, they did fraud to beat my company.”
Who Was Loyal to Tupac?
On the flip side, later in the episode, Knight brought up a few folks who he swore were real friends of Tupac. Mainly noting Treach, the frontman of Naughty by Nature and a close friend and collaborator of Pac’s, and Scarface, another rapper friend of Pac’s, Knight said these two would never betray their late-great pal.
“I wanna say this about Pac, I wanna say this about Treach, I wanna say this about Scarface. These three young men, as artists and men, have a bond that we need to teach and people need to use their model.” he said. “Treach and Tupac was road dogs. Still today, you can count on Treach to represent Pac. You can count on Treach to live with Pac, as far as he still represents that man. Same thing with Scarface. Face is gonna f**k with Pac no matter what, that’s why I was joyful when we did that song with Face and Pac, ‘Smile.’ These two people love Pac and they ride for Pac. They’re not doing it on no fake shit, they’re doing it because they’re two real motherf**kers.”
Listen to Episode 5 of Collect Call HERE.
Photo by Mark Mainz/Getty Images
