Suge Knight

Marion Hugh "Suge" Knight Jr. (born April 19, 1965) is an American music executive and convicted felon who is the co-founder and former CEO of Death Row Records.

He graduated in 1983.

Knight is affiliated with the Mob Piru Bloods, a set of the Bloods gang.

From 1983 to 1985, he attended and played football at El Camino College.

In 1985, he transferred to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and played football there for two years.

He would briefly play in the NFL for the Los Angeles Rams as a replacement player during the 1987 NFL players strike.

Knight went undrafted in the 1987 NFL Draft, but was invited to the Los Angeles Rams training camp.

He was cut by the Rams during camp, but became a replacement player during the 1987 NFL Players Strike, and played two games for the Rams.

After his brief NFL career, Knight found work as a concert promoter and a bodyguard for celebrities including Bobby Brown.

In 1989, Knight formed his own music publishing company.

His first big profit in the business came when Vanilla Ice agreed to sign over royalties from his smash hit "Ice Ice Baby", because the song included material allegedly written by Knight's client Mario Johnson.

Knight and his bodyguards confronted Vanilla Ice several times.

There was a rumor during that time that Knight entered Vanilla Ice's hotel room and allegedly dangled him by his ankles off the balcony.

However, Vanilla Ice has said that never actually happened, only that Knight threatened to throw him off the balcony; the claim was resolved in court.

Knight next formed an artist management company and signed West Coast hip hop artists DJ Quik and The D.O.C. Through the latter, he met several members of the seminal gangsta rap group N.W.A.

Dr. Dre and The D.O.C. wanted to leave both N.W.A and their label, Ruthless Records, run by Eazy-E, another member of N.W.A. According to N.W.A's manager Jerry Heller, Knight and his henchmen threatened Heller and Eazy-E with lead pipes and baseball bats to make them release Dre, The D.O.C., and Michel'le from their contracts.

Knight was a central figure in gangsta rap's commercial success in the 1990s.

From the late 1990s into the early 2000s, Knight spent a few years incarcerated for assault convictions and associated violations of probation and parole.

Ultimately, Dre and D.O.C. co-founded Death Row Records in 1991 with Knight, who vowed to make it "the Motown of the '90s".

This feat is attributed to the record label's first two album releases: Dr. Dre's The Chronic in 1992 and Snoop Dogg's Doggystyle in 1993.

Initially, Knight fulfilled his ambitions: he secured a distribution deal with Interscope, and Dre's 1992 solo debut album, The Chronic, went on to triple platinum status in the United States by the end of 1993.

It also made a career for Dre's protégé, Snoop Dogg, whose own debut album Doggystyle obtained a quadruple platinum certification in the United States in 1994.

Meanwhile, Death Row had begun a public feud with 2 Live Crew's Luther Campbell.

The following year, he opened a private, by-appointment-only nightclub in Las Vegas called Club 662, so named because the numbers spelled out MOB on telephone keypads, MOB standing for Member of Bloods.

In 1995, Tupac Shakur began serving a prison sentence of up to 4 1⁄2 years for a sexual abuse conviction.

Knight struck a deal with Shakur that October, posting his $1.4 million bail and freeing him from prison pending an appeal of his conviction, while signing him to Death Row Records.

In 1995, he ran afoul of civil rights activist C. Delores Tucker's campaign against gangsta rap, whose criticism of Death Row's glamorization of the "gangsta" lifestyle may have helped scuttle a lucrative deal with Time Warner.

In 1996, the label released Shakur's greatest commercial success, All Eyez on Me.

That September, after departing a Mike Tyson boxing match in Las Vegas, a group that included Knight and Shakur assaulted Orlando Anderson, a Southside Compton Crips gang member.

Three hours later, someone shot into the car that Knight was driving and fatally wounded Shakur, injuring Knight in the process.

Dr. Dre left Death Row Records shortly before Shakur's death, followed by Snoop Dogg two years later.

The label rapidly declined.

Meanwhile, allegations mounted that Knight, beyond employing gang members, had often employed intimidation and violence in his business dealings.

Knight is serving a 28-year sentence in prison for a fatal hit-and-run in 2015.

Prior to founding Death Row Records, Knight played college football at UNLV as a defensive end.

In September 2018, Knight pled no contest to voluntary manslaughter in a fatal 2015 hit-and-run, and was sentenced to 28 years in prison.

Knight's conviction, along with his previous felonies (stealing a camera, and also sending a harassing text message to Straight Outta Compton director F. Gary Gray), triggered California's three-strikes law.

He is eligible for parole in October 2034, when he will be 69 years old.

Knight was born in Compton, California, the son of Maxine (née Dikemen) and Marion Knight Sr. His name Suge (pronounced /ʃʊɡ/) derives from "Sugar Bear", a childhood nickname.

He attended Lynwood High School in nearby Lynwood, where he was a football and track star.