A new book by a Los Angeles Police Department detective says rival record label executives for Notorious BIG and Tupac Shakur (Sean Combs and Suge Knight, respectively) ordered the rappers' killings in 1996. Greg Kating worked on the still-unfinished investigations into the two shootings, which defined and fueled a rivalry between East Coast and West Coast rappers in the 1990s. Kating says the department's been sitting on tapes of damning testimony since 2008, from a one-time gangster who says Combs offered him $1 million to kill Tupac and Knight, and from one of Knight's lovers who says she helped arrange a similar deal to kill Biggie and Combs. The book's due out on Tuesday, but the L.A. Weekly has a lengthy preview that includes this description of the two key revelations:

In a taped confession fully reviewed by L.A. 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." In another stunning confession, detailed in LAPD documents reviewed by the Weekly, the mother of one of Knight's children, identified in Kading's book as "Theresa Swann," breaks down in tears, stating that the former Death Row boss gave her the money to pay Wardell "Poochie" Fouse — Knight's close associate and a fellow member of the Mob Piru Bloods — to kill Smalls.

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Adam Martin