Tupac Shakur - FishbowlLA

The Hollywood Reporter Failed Rap History 101

Marcus Vanderberg — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 10:03:16 +0000

Tupac Shakur didn’t die for this.

The Hollywood Reporter posted a Coachella recap early Monday morning on the duo of Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre closing out the show and the return (via hologram) of Shakur.

All of the search engines in the world must have been down (and the one staffer who knows hip-hop was asleep) because this is what “THR Staff” wrote when describing Shakur’s performance:

Tupac arrived via hologram, seamlessly — and amazingly — joining Snoop on “Come With Me,” “Hail Mary” and “Gangsta Party.”

So, Shakur not only performed for the first time in 15 years, but he dropped a new track at Coachella entitled “Come With Me.”

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INTERVIEW: Michael Lewittes on Becoming a Gossip Cop

Richard Horgan — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 11:00:23 +0000

Long before e-mail bulletins, tweets and Drudge Report siren headlines, there were alpha-numeric pagers and pay phones. As veteran east coast journalist Michael Lewittes recalls, these now antiquated devices played a key role in one of his earliest moments of reporter triumph.

“One night I was out to dinner and drinks with New York’s police commissioner and deputy commissioner,” Lewittes (pictured) tells FishbowlLA. “Across the pagers came the message that Tupac Shakur has been shot (not when he was murdered, but a previous shooting).”

“I got the scoop,” he continues. “I had to drop a quarter in a pay phone to call the desk at the New York Daily News. Just a few hours later, I was on the subway — en route to work — and the riders were reading the Daily News and our rivals, the New York Post. But only the Daily News had the Tupac exclusive that he had been shot outside of a recording studio on the West Side in New York. And it remained a Daily News exclusive all day long on the radio and news broadcasts.”

“Naturally, today that story would have been picked up in a split second, spread across the globe, and no one would have known it was broken by the Daily News.”

The era of “hat tip” entertainment journalism is replete with theft, cacophonous forward-momentum and miraculously scrubbed errant reports. Which for Lewittes, who moved on from the Daily News to Cosmopolitan, the Post, US Weekly and Access Hollywood, frames his latest gig. Since 2009, he has been calling out bad entertainment reporting on his well-respected website gossipcop.com. And he has, in part, Perez Hilton to thank for this.

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KPCC Interviews Tupac FourSquare Mapper

Richard Horgan — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 09:30:55 +0000

From Leeds in Northern England, 30-year-old video game PR manager Paul Rayment (pictured) recently chatted with KPCC reporter Ashley Bailey about his surprise at the success of a map he created tracing the notable touchstones of late rapper Tupac Shakur.

FourSquare users can download the map and check in to various Tupac places. Rayment meanwhile has already completed a second such interactive tool, which locks into Jay Z‘s “Empire State of Mind” references. Per Bailey’s report:

The map plots Tupac as he zigzags from his pre-fame days in Baltimore to school in Oakland to his record label in LA, and on to Las Vegas–where someone shot him in 1996 when he was 25-years-old. “Some of them had to be included like where he was shot and hospitals–that kind of thing,” Rayment said. “But, I wanted to do something more original. For instance, what he did in school, how he was first talent-spotted.”

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LAPD Cop Turned Author Re-Ignites Tupac Shakur Murder Investigation

Richard Horgan — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 08:45:59 +0000

The release this week of Murder Rap, a cleverly titled book by former LAPD detective Greg Kading, has stoked a whole new round of explosive media coverage about the unsolved killings of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls. Beginning with the LA Weekly, which blasted out a sensational headline tying Sean Combs and Suge Knight to, respectively, the killings of Shakur and Smalls.

Kading, after giving the Weekly an exclusive first look and interview, has talked with website HipHopDX.com. Although Knight has yet to be heard from, Combs told local reporters Chris Vogel and Simone Wilson via email that the Kading allegations are “pure fiction and completely ridiculous.” Per the pair’s article:

Perhaps luckily for the rappers’ families and fans still seeking closure, Kading made copies of nearly every investigative report and taped confession before he left LAPD. His explosive book details the behind-the-scenes failure by LAPD to bring Shakur’s and Smalls’ killers to justice.

In a taped confession fully reviewed by LA Weekly, Keffe D says, “[Combs] took me downstairs and he’s like, ‘Man, I want to get rid of them dudes.’ … I was like, ‘We’ll wipe their ass out, quick. It’s nothing.’ … We wanted a million.”

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Former LA Times Reporter Wants New, Front-Page Tupac Retraction

Richard Horgan — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 13:00:50 +0000

It’s been a pretty sweet couple of months for the LA Times, what with Pulitzer Prizes and the mother of all Schwarzenegger tips. But the newspaper could be headed for much less hallowed journalistic ground, courtesy of an item today in the LA Weekly by Simone Wilson and Dennis Romero.

Disgraced former LA Times investigative reporter Chuck Philips (pictured), who took a buyout not long after the paper retracted his March 2008 story about Tupac Shakur because fake FBI documents were sourced, suggests that recent remarks made by his formerly anonymous story source prove that he merits not just an apology but also a new, front-page retraction of the paper’s previous retraction:

“I want them to run a front-page retraction,” Philips tells LA Weekly. “Same size, same place.”

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Former LA Times Reporter Slams Gangsta Rap Manager

Richard Horgan — Tue, 24 May 2011 12:00:27 +0000

This is definitely not your usual back-and-forth media parry.

After yesterday’s publicly released statement from music industry manager James “Jimmy the Henchman” Rosemond, who responded to being federally indicted on cocaine distribution charges by pointing the finger at the New York Daily News and reporter Chuck Philips, the long-time former LA Times journalist fired back via website AllHipHop.com:

“I had no idea Jimmy Henchman was such a sensitive wee man suffering from so many paranoid delusions. Nor did I realize that Tha (self-proclaimed) Gangsta Manager of Rap was in fact a persecuted civil rights martyr at the center of a government conspiracy. Poor Jimmy. Has anyone seen my tiny violin?”

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Former Tupac Bodyguard Helps Lookalike Prepare for Audition

Richard Horgan — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 14:45:32 +0000

Monica Garske of AOL’s Weird News caught up with LA based Tupac Shakur impersonator Josh Harraway (pictured). Besides the occasional TV and live gig, Harraway says he has dealt with everything from being chased by TMZ paparazzi to getting paid by a fan to hang out for a few hours at the Rainbow Room.

Now, as he prepares for his biggest Tupac moment – an audition for the upcoming Antoine Fuqua directed Morgan Creek biopic – Harraway has an uncommon asset in the form of Frank Alexander, Shakur’s real-life bodyguard from September 1995 until the rapper’s death in the fall of 1996. Alexander tells AOL he’s working closely with Harraway to help him prepare for the audition:

“I’m teaching him everything I can about how Tupac moved. Josh’s resemblance is striking. With practice, I think he has a good chance of getting the role,” Alexander said. “Josh still needs to work on getting down Tupac’s swagger and charisma, but he’s beginning to scratch the surface…”

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Police: Ronni Chasen Gunned Down by Shooter in Another Car

Richard Horgan — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 08:45:51 +0000

As new details emerged last night via the Hollywood Reporter about the Beverly Hills Police investigation into the shocking murder of publicist Ronni Chasen, it still seems ludicrous that a beloved 64-year-old PR industry veteran would be deliberately targeted by a mob-style hit. Could it be, perhaps, a tragic case of mistaken identity, with the shooter basing their actions on the make and model of car Chasen was driving? Or a very foolhardy carjacking attempt, gone horribly wrong?

According to a police working theory shared via THR, Chasen was shot by someone in another car that pulled up to the passenger side of her vehicle, either as she was turning left onto Whittier Drive going west on Sunset, or just after she had turned south onto that street. There is also, as everyone expected, archived security camera footage from one or more of the city’s fortified celebrity residences.

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Regret the Error 2008 Round Up

Tina Dupuy — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 10:44:47 +0000

Regret the Error’s 2008 round up is super juicy this year.

Craig Silverman notes the weekly paper in Montgomery, TX – the Bulletin ‘lifting‘ of all their stories.

Rick Reilly getting plagiarized by two different sports ‘writers’.

The LAT Tupac Shakur debacle.

And our favorite typo, stating the name of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel being “One Hundred Years of Solicitude.” Which ends up being a more accurate description of the book.

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LAT In 90 Seconds — Tupac Edition

Greg — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 11:28:26 +0000

Reality Check: The L.A. Times is reeling from the embarrassing revelation yesterday that a story linking Sean “Diddy” Combs to the murder of Tupac Shakur was, in a word, bullshit. In a story today by James Rainey (man, does that guy get the bum assignments), the paper does a mea culpa, apologizing for writing a story based on fabricated documents, and giving props to the Smoking Gun for figuring the whole thing out.

Get Out Your Checkbooks: Rap talent manager James Rosemond said the Times article created “a potentially violent climate in the hip-hop community.” His attorney, Jeffrey Lichtman, added: “I would suggest to Mr. Philips and his editors that they immediately print an apology and take out their checkbooks — or brace themselves for an epic lawsuit.”

Questions Remain: We hope this isn’t the last we hear of this story because we still have a ton of questions. For one, Chuck Phillips says he believed the veracity of the forged FBI documents because they were filed in court. So, who filed them? Who masterminded this hoax? So help us, if Ashton Kutcher is involved, we’re gonna throw our computers out the window and move to a farm.

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Chuck Philips’ Story a Sham?

Greg — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 11:29:57 +0000

The Smoking Gun reports that the records the LAT used to uncover “new details” in Tupac’s murder were fake. According to the LAT:

Los Angeles Times Editor Russ Stanton said today he will launch an internal investigation into the authenticity of documents used in a story last week asserting that the newspaper had uncovered new evidence implicating associates of rap impresario Sean “Diddy” Combs in a bloody 1994 assault on hip-hop superstar Tupac Shakur.

Stanton ordered the review after the editor of the celebrity-centric website, The Smoking Gun, told the newspaper that he had reason to doubt The Times’ account and in particular the FBI records that were supposed to buttress the story.

The website this morning posted a story saying the records — purportedly statements by an unnamed informant to an FBI agent, which the newspaper posted on its website — appeared to be forgeries. The Smoking Gun (www.thesmokinggun.com ) said the documents seemed suspicious for multiple reasons, including the fact that they appeared to be written on a typewriter, rather than a computer, and included blacked-out sections not typically found in such documents.

Oops.

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Field’s Variety Free-For-All

Guest Blogger — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 12:01:19 +0000

Is Sally Field a secret gangsta rap enthusiast? Well, not so much. But today on Variety.com’s fun regular feature, Pushy Questions, the award-winning thesp (Emmy nominated this year for her ensemble turn on ABC’s Brothers and Sisters) reveals that one of the songs that means the most to her is Tupac Shakur‘s “Dear Mama.”

Why?

Because her son gave it to her, she tells the trade paper. Another interesting note in the breezy Q&A is the list of people she’d like Variety to poll next. On Field’s short list are some heavy-hitting politicos, one terrorist and one starlet turned tabloid regular: George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Lindsay Lohan, Osama bin Laden, and Nelson Mandela. Check out the full interview here…

- Chris Gardner

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