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LAS VEGAS - Police say rap music mogul Marion "Suge" Knight is in a Las Vegas jail on drug and assault charges after he was accused of beating his girlfriend while brandishing a knife.
The 43-year-old Knight was arrested Wednesday on charges of assault with a deadly weapon, possession of a controlled substance, possession of dangerous drugs without a prescription and battery domestic violence.
Police responding to a report of a car hitting a curb near the Las Vegas Strip say they found Knight standing over his longtime girlfriend with a knife in his hand.
Police say the woman tried to run from the car, but Knight grabbed her.
He's accused of having the drugs Ecstasy and hydrocodone when he was arrested.
Knight's lawyers, David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld, declined to comment.
Marion Hugh Knight, Jr., better known as Suge Knight (born April 19, 1965 in Compton, California), is an entrepreneur in the hip hop music industry and co-founder and CEO of Death Row Records. The record label rose to dominate the charts after Dr. Dre's breakthrough success The Chronic in 1992. After several years of chart successes for artists including Tupac Shakur, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Tha Dogg Pound, Death Row Records fell into a stagnant limbo after Knight's incarceration on parole violation charges in September 1996. That year Dr. Dre, frustrated with the company's increasingly thuggish reputation and Knight's violent inclinations, decided to leave and form his own label. A stream of Dre-dissing records followed, but things turned tragic later in 1996, when Shakur was murdered in a drive-by shooting as a passenger in a car driven by Knight. When Shakur's East Coast rival, The Notorious B.I.G., was murdered in a similar fashion in March 1997, speculation immediately arose that Knight was involved and that B.I.G.'s death was a revenge killing. Subsequent investigations exposed a web of connections between Death Row Records, gang members who worked there, and LAPD officers who sometimes worked security for the label and its artists during off hours, but to date, both murders remain unsolved.
More recently Knight showed up to the set of 50 Cent's video for "In Da Club" and menaced the rapper, as well as his mentor Dr. Dre. No altercation came of it and Knight left with no charges filed. However, in December 2002 he was jailed again for violating his parole by associating with gang members. After his release, he was arrested and jailed yet again in 2003, for assaulting parking lot attendant Mehdi Lazrak.
In October 2004, despite having not been formally invited, Suge attended the VIBE Awards, ostensibly to support Petey Pablo, whom he manages. That night Dr. Dre was to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award. With Suge in the audience, a man approached Dr. Dre shortly before Dre was called up for the award and feigned interest in an autograph before punching Dre. In the resulting scuffle, then-G-Unit rapper Young Buck stabbed the man. Immediately, stories pointed fingers at Suge, who went on The Late Late Show and insisted he supports Dr. Dre. The man, Jimmy James Johnson, faces life in prison due to the three strikes law in California, after Dre insisted he be charged. Johnson is now claiming that Suge paid him $5,000 to punch Dre in order to humiliate him before Dre received his Lifetime Achievement Award from Quincy Jones and Snoop Dogg.
On the evening of February 5, 2005, Knight was arrested in Barstow, California, after police pulled him over for making an illegal U-turn. They found marijuana in his truck, and he was booked on suspicion of violating his parole. Sheriff's officials detained Knight pending his transfer to state prison, where it was to be decided whether Knight would be charged or released. He was released shortly thereafter.
On April 4, 2006, Suge Knight filed bankruptcy due to civil litigation against him in which Lydia Harris claimed to have been cheated out of a 50% stake in Death Row Records. Prior to filing, Knight had been ordered to pay $107 million to Harris.[5] Under questioning by creditors, he denied having money tucked away in foreign countries or in an African company that deals in diamonds and gold. Bankruptcy documents filed showed Knight had no income this year from employment or operation of a business. His bank account contained just $11, and he owned clothing worth $1,000, furniture and appliances valued at $2,000, and jewelry worth $25,000, according to the records. He had testified that the last time he checked the label’s financial records was at least 10 years ago. Knight’s lawyer said that his client was still “at the helm” of Death Row and had been working on securing distribution deals for the label’s catalog. Knight had also testified that he had reached an agreement with Lydia Harris, saying "I settled for a million and signed off on it." Harris told reporters she had received a $1 million payment but had not agreed to settle the matter. "I'm telling you, I didn't do a settlement for $1 million. That's ridiculous. Let's keep it real," she said.
Knight skipped a meeting with his creditors after injuring himself in a motorcycle accident. Another scheduled meeting with the creditors had been missed after Suge said he had experienced a death in his family. Finally on July 7, 2006, the federal judge, Ellen Carroll, ordered a bankruptcy trustee takeover of Suge Knight's Death Row Records, saying the record label had undergone a gross amount of mismanagement. She commented that "apparently there's no one at the helm of Death Row".
He filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, which allows a company to continue business operations while restructuring. Death Row was being operated by Neilson during the bankruptcy proceedings, while Knight oversaw his bankruptcy estate as a debtor in possession.
Recently he was engaged again in another dispute with former friend and ex-associate Snoop Dogg after Snoop disrespected him in Rolling Stone magazine. Suge responded on Pagesix.com calling Snoop Dogg "a rat" and "a crybaby", accusing him of not serving time in prison due to his close relations with the police and running away from "real" fights.
In June 2007, he placed his seven-bedroom, 9 1/2-bath home in Malibu on the market for $6.2 million as part of his "financial makeover".
Knight has started a new record label called Blackball Records, with its first signee Young Life and has featured it in his new reality show called "Unfinished Business". The show is based on Knight dispelling long-standing rumors in sit down interviews, his days with Death Row and the artists he worked with, and finding new talent for his record label. As of June 2008, the show has not been picked up by any major network.
Knight is a known member of the Mob Piru Bloods gang, and has had ties to several LAPD police officers involved in the Rampart case, including Kevin Gaines, who dated his ex-wife and worked security for Death Row Records and David Mack. At least one former associate of his, rapper Dr. Dre, has an order of protection out on Knight. Since the death of Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G., there have been various rumors of Knight's involvement in at least one, if not both of the murder conspiracies. There is circumstantial evidence for the latter, but still, both remain unsolved.
On May 10th 2008, Knight was involved in an altercation involving a monetary dispute outside of a nightclub in Hollywood. He was knocked out for 3 minutes, taken to the hospital, and did not cooperate with the LAPD. About a month later, he sold Death Row Records to New York-based company Global Music Group, which confirmed it had purchased the firm in a statement to the Associated Press news agency.
August 1, 2008, Suge Knight was formally accused of sending death threats to an inmate, Waymond "Suave" Anderson, to change his testimony regarding the 1997 death of The Notorious B.I.G. in court July 31, 2008.
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