Tupac
Photo: Courtesy of Cookin Soul

Lil Wayne's No Ceilingsis making a serious argument for Mixtape of the Year right now. Halloween was a great day for music — heck, a bunch of great music dropped last week. This week is off to great start with the new Rihanna and Young Jeezy joints and Game is talking about releasing four mixtapes at once. Check in with us all week for some exclusives — but today, those Cookin' Soul cats bring back one of the all-time best.

Don't Sleep: Necessary Notables

Mixtape: Night of the Living Dead Part II

Headliner: Tupac Shakur

Co-Starring: Cookin' Soul and DJ Whoo Kid

Key Collaborations: "The Beyond" featuring Jay-Z; "Halloween Pt. II" featuring Notorious B.I.G.; "The Fog" featuring Notorious B.I.G.

Essential Info: Producers got in on the Halloween action, putting their latest mixtape out on Saturday along with releases from Lil Wayne, Soulja Boy and others. The Soul brothers concentrated on putting a new spin on classics from Tupac Shakur.

"Last year we made a classic, Night of the Living Dead Part I," Soul's Big Size said.

"So we was talking with Whoo Kid and said, 'We gotta come back this year with another classic. Tupac!,' " Zock added. "One of the greatest ever. We're keeping with the concept of the first one, sampling from horror movies, original soundtracks like 'Fog,' 'Halloween' and 'Dawn of the Dead.' "

"This tape is full of classic records," Size confirmed.

"This crazy mixtape is the missing link to the B.I.G. mixtape we did last year," Whoo Kid offered. "This should complete the collection, unless we go in with Big Pun next year. Cookin' Soul are the best in theme mixtapes and, of course, as you can see, they sought after one of the best mixtape DJs out to put it together — pow!"

You can download the mixtape from their Web site.

Other Heat This Week

» Wiz Khalifa - B.A.R. (Burn After Rolling)
» Mike Posner - One Foot Out the Door
» Sean Price - Kimbo Price

For other artists featured in Mixtape Daily, check out Mixtape Daily Headlines.

• Mixtape Daily: 50 Cent, Andre 3000, Clipse, Cookin' Soul, Lil Wayne

• Tupac

Diddy and Notorious B.I.G.
Photo: Evan Agostini/ Getty Images

"Notorious" is ... Oscar-worthy?

"I'm not amping this up," he said in part four of his Biggie confessional video blog. "It deserves to be honored at the Academy Awards. I've seen everything that was honored this year, from 'The Wrestler' to 'Slumdog Millionaire.' This joint right here, to me, is greater than those. I don't wanna sugarcoat it. Those are great movies. But this one, we have the privilege to be honest.

"It'd be a tragedy if you don't give this movie some jewelry," Diddy added.

In "The Confessional, Part 2: The L.A. Story," Diddy said the day that Biggie was killed, he was not supposed to be in Los Angeles. Diddy recalled how his friend called him and said he wanted to postpone a scheduled trip to London, insisting that they party instead. The rapper had recently wrapped recording for his sophomore album, Life After Death, and wanted to hang out with the Bad Boy family and Junior M.A.F.I.A. to celebrate.

"I said, 'Yes, aiight, we'll hang out,' " Diddy said, and Biggie was gunned down after leaving the Vibe party they attended. "It's a call that I always, always, always remember. There wasn't a way I could talk him out of it. I didn't run Biggie. He was his own man at the end of the day, and he just wasn't gonna go [to London]. It was just ... the call plays over and over in my head. Like, what if he would have just gotten on the plane? ... Some things are just meant to be for reasons that are beyond and above us."

Diddy also divulged his thoughts on Biggie and Tupac, likening the pair to "Tom and Jerry." Diddy repeated the often-told tale of the two Geminis hitting it off immediately.

"You could not separate these two," he said. "The energy they had together. There wasn't no one trying to be a gangster or a thug. I witnessed it, there was so much love and so much admiration. Their relationship was for real. It was like two children in grade school that just hit it off and just hung out with each other all the time."

MTV News has even more B.I.G. things on the horizon surrounding "Notorious" — stay tuned!

• The Notorious B.I.G.'s Signatures

• Diddy
• Notorious B.I.G.
• Tupac

Johnny "J" Jackson and Tupac Shakur
Photo: Klock Work Entertainment

Friends and family of producer Johnny "J" Jackson are simply stunned that he died at age 39 over the weekend.

According to a source close to J and his family, he was serving a sentence in Los Angeles County Jail for DWI. The source confirmed reports that he died after apparently jumping to his death off an upper level at the jail. One jail spokesperson has not yet returned MTV News' phone calls, while another was trying to retrieve information on the incident.

Jackson, known in the music industry as "Johnny J," might not be as widely known as Swizz Beatz or Timbaland, but his stats are impressive. He produced about half of Tupac Shakur's All Eyez on Me double LP, including the hit "How Do U Want It."

"When I talked to him, he told me he sold over 100 million records," King Tech from "The Wake Up Show" said Monday (October 6). "He has a bunch of stuff. ... In my opinion, he needs to be put up there on legendary status with a Quincy Jones or Dr. Dre, because nobody knew he sold that many records. He was more of a low-key guy. He didn't go out there flashing his money, but when you go to his studio, you'd see 100 'Pac plaques. You'd be like, 'Man, you did all of these records?' "

J's last major interview was with Tech on "The Wake Up Show" four months ago, right before he went to jail. The producer told Tech and the listeners that he had around 30 Tupac records in his vaults that were unreleased and that he was part owner of all of 'Pac's recordings.

"We did six or seven a day," J said of the MC's schedule. "Depending on how the Hennessy was going, we turned it out."

"Tupac's real life was like a movie to me, and Johnny J was a big part of the score and soundtrack to that movie," L.A. lyricist and former Death Row artist Crooked I told MTV News. "The classic songs he produced for 'Pac will be with us forever — us being the West Coast and the whole world. Real talk!"

King Tech said working so closely with Tupac and then losing him took its toll on J. "I think that always played in his psyche: 'My best friend, my partner, is gone.' I think that always affected dude," Tech said.

Tech also said J never worried about getting the recognition that some other producers have gotten, but he did stay on top of his business and was living well off of Tupac royalties alone. Before going to prison, Johnny J was working with local, unknown groups in L.A. such as the Hux and spearheading an album by Tatyana Ali from "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air."

Johnny J started off in music on a high note, co-producing one-hit wonder Candyman's debut album, Ain't No Shame in My Game, which spawned the commercial monster "Knock the Boots." A few years later, he started working with Tupac's group Thug Life, which eventually led to working on 'Pac's superstar solo material and posthumous albums.

"If we could have just 10 minutes to talk, I think the outcome could have been different," Tech said of his friend's demise. "Unbelievable. The dude was set for life. With the amount of hits he has out, once you read his biography, the amount of songs he had was insane. It is really strange. Everybody is confused out here. Everybody I talk to are like, 'What?' He wasn't broke, publishing was coming in, he had a wife, he had two kids and a big house. He had everything. He didn't need to go."

You can watch Johnny J's last interview with King Tech on "The Wake Up Show" Web site.

• Tupac

Tupac
Photo: Interscope

Less than five months after an embarrassing front-page retraction of his story on the 1994 shooting of Tupac Shakur, Los Angeles Times reporter Chuck Philips has been let go by the paper in the latest round of newsroom layoffs, according to Variety.

Philips, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1999 for his stories on corruption in the music industry, was among the 150 or so Times staffers who are being laid off or accepting buyouts as a result of budget cuts.

Earlier this year, Philips wrote a front-page story for the paper alleging that Sean "Diddy" Combs and the Notorious B.I.G. were connected to the shooting of Tupac Shakur outside New York's Quad Studios. But the documents on which he based the story turned out to have been created by an imprisoned con man. The distressing revelation, uncovered by TheSmokingGun.com, resulted in an internal investigation by the paper and a retraction that included an apology for some erroneous reporting on another person implicated in the story, New York hip-hop manager Jimmy Rosemond, who called for Philips' firing at the time.

The paper also took the unusual step of not only retracting the online story that ran on March 17 and the shorter version that appeared in the paper two days later, but also the content of two online chats Philips participated in on March 18 and 25, and comments from the Times' Soundboard blog on March 21.

Philips — who has written a number of controversial stories about the murders of Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. over the years, some of which have also come under fire for their sourcing — had defended his reporting on the Shakur/Combs story in an interview with MTV News before the revelation of the forged documents. At the time the original story was published, both Rosemond and Combs vehemently denied any involvement in the shooting.

Philips did not return an e-mail for comment on his departure at press time.

• Tupac
• Diddy
• Notorious B.I.G.

Tupac Shakur
Photo: Chi Modu

The Los Angeles Times already apologized for a front-page story that implicated Sean "Diddy" Combs in the 1994 New York shooting of late rapper Tupac Shakur. On Monday (April 7), the paper retracted the story entirely, admitting that writer Chuck Philips relied on fake FBI documents to build his flawed report.

The retraction came three weeks after the paper's Web site published a story by Philips — a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who has frequently investigated and reported on the murders of Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. — titled "An Attack on Tupac Shakur Launched a Hip-Hop War," which alleged that associates of Combs' had arranged the shooting of Shakur at a New York recording studio after the rapper had turned down offers to join Combs' Bad Boy Records label.

In Monday's retraction, the Times reported that Philips' story and the related faked documents have been removed from the paper's site because the article "relied heavily on information that the Times no longer believes to be credible."

Combs told MTV News last week that the Times story and the attendant press coverage "just really hurt." He vehemently denied any involvement in the Shakur shooting from the moment the story was published.

A week after Philips' article ran, TheSmokingGun.com revealed that the documents Philips used to build elements of his story appeared to have been faked by a noted forger and hip-hop player wannabe, James Sabatino, who is currently in prison on charges of wire fraud and racketeering. The paper issued an apology for the story on March 27, but the other man implicated in Philips' story, New York hip-hop manager Jimmy Rosemond, who also stridently proclaimed his innocence, told MTV in an interview that he would like to see Philips fired. (Diddy isn't calling for such measures.)

Rosemond's attorney, Jeffrey Lichtman, who had threatened legal action following the publication of the original story, said in a statement released Monday on behalf of his client: "We're pleased that the L.A. Times has gone further in admitting that not only were the FBI reports fake which implicated Mr. Rosemond but that the underlying claims about his involvement in the assault on Tupac were fake as well. We hope that in the future the Times recognizes that fabricating scurrilous accusations in an effort to sell newspapers completely undermines their credibility and guarantees that any profits made from selling such garbage will be disgorged in litigation."

"The Times has since concluded that the FBI reports were fabricated and that some of the other sources relied on — including the person Philips previously believed to be the 'confidential source' cited in the FBI reports — do not support major elements of the story," the paper explained in the retraction. Along with retracting the front-page Web story from March 17 and a shorter version that appeared in the actual paper on March 19, the Times also retracted the text of two online chats that Philips participated in on March 18 and March 25, and comments from the Times' Soundboard blog from March 21. (In addition to the online chats, Philips also defended his story in an interview with MTV News.)

After an internal investigation into the report, the Times said it now believes Sabatino forged the FBI reports and "concocted his role in the assault, as well as his supposed relationships with Combs [and] Rosemond." As a result, the paper specifically retracted all the statements in the article and the Web posts that suggested that Rosemond and Sabatino "orchestrated or played any role in the assault on Shakur or that they lured him into an ambush at the Quad Studios. ... To the extent these publications could be interpreted as creating the impression that Combs was involved in arranging the attack, the Times wishes to correct that misimpression, which was neither stated in the article nor intended."

The paper also apologized for mistakenly reporting that Rosemond has served prison time for drug-dealing and was convicted in 1996 of drug offenses, although Rosemond did admit to MTV News last month that at some point during the mid-1990s, "I was [in prison] dealing with some legal issues I had." He declined to elaborate further.

• Jimmy Rosemond Recalls Night Of Tupac's Shooting

• Tupac
• Diddy
• Notorious B.I.G.

Jimmy Rosemond
Photo: MTV News

On November 30, 1994, Tupac Shakur was in Ron G's New York apartment laying down vocals for the popular mixtape DJ's next series. Shakur was then interrupted by a phone call from Jimmy Rosemond, then known as Jimmy Henchman.

"I was managing a kid by the name of Little Shawn, who was signed to Uptown Records," Rosemond explained. "And so [Uptown founder] Andre Harrell had asked me, 'Could we get Tupac on this record?' And I had called Tupac and said, 'Hey, do you wanna get on this record? Because Andre wants you on this record.' "

Rosemond says the story of Tupac's Quad Studios shooting that night has been twisted more times than a gangbanger's fingers. According to him, the scene wasn't nearly as empty as it has often been reported. Rosemond said there were plenty of people in attendance that night — including the Trackmasters and Harrell — but the story seems to always boil down to him and Bad Boy, he said. The Trackmasters and Harrell did not return interview requests made by MTV News by press time.

"What people don't understand is that Trackmasters were there, Puffy came down to say hi to me, and Andre Harrell — Andre Harrell was there," he said. "There was a guy by the name of Mark Sigel; he was the president of ICM at the time, ICM the agency talent group. You had Trackmasters, Little Shawn, Bryce Wilson — there was about 15 people there. So people in their mind, when they hear this story, they think it was just a bunch of guys, including me, trying to summon Tupac to the studio for no reason, on some hangout stuff. But it was all business. I was doing business that day as I have done, before then and after that. But as the story went on, the fairy tale of it got bigger, which really wasn't the truth."

And that fairy tale has been twisted even further in recent weeks. The Los Angeles Times published a story March 17 that claimed Rosemond masterminded the 1994 shooting and that Diddy and the Notorious B.I.G. knew it was going down. The story has since been debunked by TheSmokingGun.com, which reported that the article was based on forged documents, and the Times in turn printed a front-page apology.

Rosemond has vehemently denied having advance knowledge of Shakur's ambush, as the L.A. Times reported then retracted. But he said the story grew once the rapper put it to record, on "Against All Odds," and Rosemond had no chance to retaliate. He said he had his own theory about what happened in the lobby that night.

"It's odd for me to assess it only because there are so many rumors out there," he said. "There are so many guys that take blame for things that they haven't really done. And maybe some of them have; it isn't really for me to try to figure that out. I have my own theories in my head of what happened that night: When 'Pac came out the elevator [after being shot], he was conscious, he was talking, he was rolling up some weed. I didn't see five bullet holes in Tupac, as reported. You can ask Andre Harrell and all these people that was there."

In an interview Rosemond gave to Vibe magazine a few years ago, he recalled Shakur being discombobulated and shouting, asking Rosemond why he set him up. But when Shakur recorded "Against All Odds," implicating Rosemond in his shooting, the talent manager (for the Game and Gucci Mane) called the song "Tupac at his finest" and "shock treatment."

"When you listen to the record, he called out Jay-Z, he called out Nas, he called out Puffy, he called out almost everybody," Rosemond said. "I mean, this is Tupac at his finest. What I've learned of 'Pac, for him to do, and some rappers try it now, it's more of the shock treatment. At the time when he mentioned my name, it was the in thing to do. It was the in thing to call Puffy's name. It was the in thing to call Jay-Z's name during his rise. And what I want people to be clear about, when he did mention my name, I wasn't even on the streets. I was already away [in prison] dealing with some legal issues I had. So I wasn't even here, so by the time he mentioned my name on the record, there was no way I could defend that, ask him why he did that, or any of those things.

"Absolutely never [had I] even know about it, never heard about it — before, afterward — had nothing to with it," Rosemond added about the ambush. "Nobody that I know [was] associated with [the attack], and this is why I have confidently, in the last 14 years, told people that they can dig up whatever they want to dig up. And I've been very firm in what I've said to people: that I've had nothing to do with it."

• Jimmy Rosemond Recalls Night Of Tupac's Shooting

• Tupac
• Diddy
• Notorious B.I.G.
• Game

MTV News' Sway and Jimmy Rosemond
Photo: MTV News

The Los Angeles Times issued an apology and Chuck Philips acknowledged he was "duped," but Jimmy Rosemond, who was implicated in Philips' contested article along with Diddy for organizing Tupac's 1994 Quad Studios ambush, wants even greater vindication.

Rosemond called for Philips' job.

"I lived with the rumor of what happened to Tupac for the last 14 years," Rosemond said Thursday afternoon. "And rumors are rumors — either you believe them or you don't — but when you have a reputable newspaper like the Los Angeles Times with a Pulitzer Prize winner like Chuck Philips to validate a rumor, then it becomes real. It becomes real in your life, real to the people around you. When you Google me, this affects me regardless, forever. I could always rebut a rumor, but this is something that's well more damaging. And I think Chuck Philips had no regards to my reputation, for myself as a businessman, myself as a father, a family man, somebody's son. And I think he did irreparable damage to my career, my reputation and everything else. I don't think there is no other reward for me or my family that he can do. An apology isn't going to do it. There has to be some form of reprimand in the sense of his job. He needs to lose his job."

Rosemond's remarks come just one day after Philips' article was called into question by TheSmokingGun.com. The document-digging Web site took issue with an FBI document used in Philips' bombshell report, in which he claimed Rosemond, along with a man by the name of James Sabatino, targeted Tupac Shakur for business purposes but were rebuffed by the rapper and later sought revenge against him. The Smoking Gun reported that Sabatino had forged the FBI documents; the L.A. Times conceded that they apparently were fabricated.

The paper launched its own investigation into Philips' story and ran an apology for the piece in Thursday's edition. Philips said in a statement: "In relying on documents that I now believe were fake, I failed to do my job."

Rosemond — who formerly went by the name Jimmy Henchman but dropped the moniker to distance himself from his past, including jail time — had long-denied any involvement in the shooting, which injured Shakur.

The day after Philips' article ran, Rosemond issued a lengthy statement, attacking Philips' credibility and calling into question the writer's previous bombshell story, in which Philips reported that the Notorious B.I.G. had personally handed his own gun over to the Crip gang member who killed Tupac.

In Philips' most recent article, sources linked Rosemond — now a talent manager whose clients include rappers the Game and Gucci Mane — with Sabatino. The report alleged that the two men did business together, with Rosemond aspiring to be a manager and Sabatino a promoter. When disrespected by Shakur, according to Philips' article, the two men banded together to have the rapper beaten as a way to warn him and get into Diddy's favor.

Rosemond, however, contends that he has never met Sabatino. The Smoking Gun report characterized Sabatino as "an audacious swindler who has created a fantasy world in which he managed hip-hop luminaries, conducted business with [Diddy], Shakur, Busta Rhymes and the Notorious B.I.G., and even served as [Diddy's] trusted emissary to Death Row Records boss Marion 'Suge' Knight during the outset of hostilities in the bloody East Coast/ West Coast rap feud."

"I have no idea who James Sabatino is," Rosemond said of the man who, based on the Smoking Gun's descriptions, he characterized as "a groupie." "I just found out today that he's 31. At the time of this crime, he would have had to be somewhere around 17 or 16. There's no way that I was hanging out with nobody that was 16 years old at the time."

Rosemond said he and his lawyer are discussing any legal action they may pursue in response to the story. He said Philips' apology means nothing to him, citing communication he and his attorney had with the scribe before the story was published.

"He took fiction and tried to make it into real life," Rosemond said flatly. "The Jimmy Henchman persona, something that I've been trying to get away from, it was folklore, and he tried to make it into a real character. He got caught up [talking to prison informants]."

Rosemond said he now hopes that he, along with the public, can move on to finding out who actually killed Tupac.

"I'm praying that he can rest in peace at this point, as far as dealing with the Quad issue," he said. "Let's deal with the issue of who killed Tupac — why did that happen? Why is the light so much on an assault instead of the murder of Tupac? I never understood that."

• Tupac
• Diddy
• Notorious B.I.G.

Tupac Shakur
Photo: Chi Modu

In a stunning turnaround, the Los Angeles Times printed a lengthy apology on Thursday (March 27) for its recent story on the 1994 attack on Tupac Shakur. Less than a day after TheSmokingGun.com reported that some of the documents used by Pulitzer Prize-winning Times reporter Chuck Philips to corroborate his bombshell story were faked by a notorious forger, the Times admitted that the March 17 piece was "partially based on documents that appear to have been fabricated." Both Philips and his supervisor, Deputy Managing Editor Marc Duvoisin, issued statements of apology Wednesday afternoon for the story, which is reportedly the most-read item on the Times Web site this year, with more than 1 million hits.

"In relying on documents that I now believe were fake, I failed to do my job," Philips said in a statement Wednesday.

"I'm sorry." Duvoisin added, "We should not have let ourselves be fooled. That we were is as much my fault as Chuck's. I deeply regret that we let our readers down." Also, Times Editor Russ Stanton announced that the paper would launch an internal review of the documents and the reporting surrounding the story, and that he took the criticisms of the article "very seriously."

"We published this story with the sincere belief that the documents were genuine, but our good intentions are beside the point," Stanton said in a statement. "The bottom line is that the documents we relied on should not have been used. We apologize both to our readers and to those referenced in the documents and, as a result, in the story. We are continuing to investigate this matter and will fulfill our journalistic responsibility for critical self-examination."

(Tell us what you think of Philips' apology at the Newsroom blog.)

After the exposure of the seemingly phony documents, which the Smoking Gun said were dummied up by a small-time convicted forger and wannabe hip-hop player named James Sabatino, the Times now believes the "FBI records" cited by Philips in his controversial story were indeed faked. In the piece, Philips purported that rap manager Jimmy Rosemond and another promoter, identified as Sabatino, were behind the November 1994 ambush shooting of Shakur at a New York recording studio and that they had the rap star shot to earn points with Bad Boy Records boss Sean "Diddy" Combs.

Both Combs and Rosemond vehemently denied any involvement in the plot before and after the story's publication. In a letter to Times Publisher David Hiller, Combs' lawyer Howard Weitzman called the story inaccurate, according to the paper's mea culpa. Weitzman also expanded on his earlier demand for a retraction, adding that he believed the article met the legal standard for "actual malice," which means Combs would be able to sue for libel. Rosemond's lawyer has also threatened to file suit over the piece.

(Do you agree with Rosemond? Tell us what you think should happen to Philips on the Newsroom blog.)

Weitzman issued a statement on the matter late Thursday afternoon that reads: "The Los Angeles Times' apology is, at best, a first step, but it doesn't undo the false and defamatory nature of the story, or the suspicion and innuendo that Mr. Combs has had to endure due to these untruthful allegations and the irresponsible conduct of this particular reporter. We have nothing further to say at this time."

The Times has not identified the supplier of the purported FBI reports, though the Smoking Gun claimed that they were cooked up by Sabatino — currently in federal prison on fraud charges — as part of a lawsuit against Combs over an alleged debt owed to Sabatino for some audio and video recordings he alleges he made for the Notorious B.I.G. The Times said Philips believed the authenticity of the documents in part because they had been filed in court, noting that the close inspection by the Smoking Gun uncovered obvious misspellings and inconsistencies with FBI protocol that "could have cast doubt on the documents' authenticity." The paper also mentioned that Philips said in an interview following the publication that he believed the documents were legitimate because in the reporting he'd already done on the story he'd heard many of the same details before. Similarly, Philips defended his reporting methods and use of anonymous sources in an interview with MTV News shortly after the story's publication.

According to the paper, Philips said that "a source had led him to three prison inmates who purportedly carried out the attack on Shakur. One of those inmates implicated the planners of the attack and another implied who was involved. Two others who said they witnessed the attack corroborated portions of the scenario described in the article." None of the sources were named in the story. The reporter also said the events the unnamed sources described fit with previous media accounts and even some lyrics to Shakur's songs, but still, "Philips said he wished he had done more."

Oddly, the prize-winning journalist admitted that he tried to check the authenticity of the documents with the U.S. Attorney's office in New York, which had handled the investigation of the attack on Shakur, and with a retired FBI agent, "but did not directly ask the FBI about them." While the U.S. Attorney's office declined to comment, Philips said the former FBI agent said the documents appeared legitimate. Philips, whose story was reviewed by Duvoisin and two editors on the copy desk, said in his apology that he "approached this article the same way I've approached every article I've ever written: in pursuit of the truth. I now believe the truth here is that I got duped. For this, I take full responsibility and I apologize."

After the first significant tip in the Shakur story came in nearly a year ago, Philips began conducting interviews and reporting on the piece, picking up the pace in January. But, unlike other investigative stories published recently by the paper, which were read by at least one more editor and often by the managing editor or editor of the newspaper, the Times said the Shakur story did not receive that many levels of review.

In another twist, the Times reported that the editor of the Smoking Gun, Bill Bastone, was an acquaintance of Philips' before the Shakur investigation. The two met not long ago for lunch, during which they discussed their "mutual passion for investigative reporting and other matters." Bastone knew Philips was working on the Shakur story and said he had "immediate misgivings" when he saw the piece last week. According to the paper, Bastone said he called Philips to say, "Things just don't feel right about this."

[This story was originally published at 8:58 a.m. ET on 3.27.2008]

• Tupac
• Notorious B.I.G.
• Diddy

Tupac Shakur
Photo: Interscope

Despite Los Angeles Times reporter Chuck Philips' claims that he always double- and triple-checks his anonymous sources when researching his articles, a report by the Smoking Gun Web site released on Wednesday (March 26) claims that the veteran reporter was duped by a now-incarcerated "audacious swindler" and "accomplished document forger" while researching his recent story allegedly tying Sean "Diddy" Combs and the Notorious B.I.G. to the 1994 shooting of Tupac Shakur.

According to the report, the allegations that the shooting was carried out by associates of Combs', and that he knew of the plot beforehand, were largely based on faked FBI reports cooked up by "an audacious swindler who has created a fantasy world in which he managed hip-hop luminaries, conducted business with Combs, Shakur, Busta Rhymes and the Notorious B.I.G., and even served as Combs' trusted emissary to Death Row Records boss Marion 'Suge' Knight during the outset of hostilities in the bloody East Coast-West Coast rap feud."

The man in question, according to the site, is James Sabatino, 31, who it claims has sought for years to wedge himself, after the fact, into a string of important hip-hop events, including Shakur's shooting and the murder of the Notorious B.I.G., though little evidence exists that he ever met or had contact with either man. Sabatino is described by the site as a "wildly impulsive, overweight white kid from Florida" who was little more than a rap fan and whose father once described him in a letter to a federal judge as "a disturbed young man who needed attention like a drug."

The Times article, which appeared online on March 17, was reportedly based on FBI records recently obtained by the paper and interviews with an unidentified number of unnamed sources about the November 1994 shooting of Shakur at Quad Studios in Times Square. Among the documents posted online with the six-months-in-the-making story was a PDF of two key FBI interview reports that were cited in the piece. A third purported FBI interview report was also reportedly included in court papers filed four months ago in U.S. District Court in Miami, where Sabatino is suing Combs for $16 million over an alleged decade-old business deal gone bad. The Smoking Gun reported that according to the complaint, prepared and filed personally by Sabatino from his cell at the Allenwood Federal Correctional Complex in Pennsylvania, Combs didn't pay Sabatino $175,000 for audio and video recordings the con allegedly made in 1994 of Biggie. (Sabatino is serving an 11-plus-year sentence for felony fraud and identity theft, according to the site.)

The Smoking Gun reported, however, that the FBI reports are nowhere to be found in the bureau's computerized Automated Case Support database, which allows investigators to search various bureau indices to determine whether particular individuals, groups or topics have been referred to in FBI reports or other bureau documents. The documents reportedly contain information provided to the FBI's New York office by an unnamed "confidential source." The Smoking Gun reported that Sabatino had distributed them himself and that they contain black redaction marks over the name of the agent or agents who prepared the reports, as well as the FBI case number.

Further examination of the documents by the Smoking Gun reportedly showed that — in addition to numerous spelling and grammatical errors, as well as deviation from standard language and acronyms used by the FBI — they were created on a typewriter and that, in some instances, it's clear that some of the letters were manually typed over existing letters. A former FBI supervisor told the Smoking Gun that the bureaus' agents stopped using typewriters 30 years ago. The purported FBI documents and court filings by Sabatino also reportedly have a number of similarities, including similar misspellings of words such as "makeing" and durring."

Philips, who could not be reached for comment at press time, defended his reporting techniques in an interview with MTV News last week. Since the Smoking Gun provided Philips and the paper with an account of their findings, the Times has launched an internal investigation to determine if the FBI documents cited in the story are real. "Questions have been raised about the authenticity of documents that we relied on for a story on the assault of Tupac Shakur in New York," the paper's editor, Russ Stanton, said in a statement. "We are taking this very seriously and have begun our own investigation."

A spokesperson for Diddy released a statement late Wednesday afternoon that reads: "Sean Combs is pleased that the Los Angeles Times is conducting its internal investigation. He has said all along that their story was a lie."

Another man implicated in Philips' story, Jimmy Rosemond, CEO of Czar Entertainment, also issued a statement on Wednesday. "I have always maintained over the past 14 years that I had no knowledge or involvement in the assault on Tupac in 1994," Rosemond wrote in the statement. "I have been targeted by L.A. Times writer Chuck Philips and dishonest government informants in an effort to ruin my name in an industry that I've devoted 16 years of my life to. In this peaceful time in Hip Hop, the L.A. Times' false accusations are as serious as when J. Edgar Hoover deliberately sent false hate letters to chapters of the Black Panther Party to create mistrust, violence and mayhem amongst them. Chuck Philips irresponsibly did the same thing by creating a potentially violent climate in the Hip Hop community. Because the truth has come out, I am finally hopeful that I can move forward in my service to the music industry."

Jeffrey Lichtman, Rosemond's attorney, said that he wrote a letter last year to Philips and his editors in which he warned them that their information on Rosemond's alleged involvement in the plot was "wildly" wrong.

"In my letter I warned them that if they persisted in publishing the story, they would be sued for libel," Lichtman said. "Because the L.A. Times was more interested in selling newspapers than reporting the truth, James Rosemond has been tragically libeled. Any first-year lawyer could see that the FBI 302 reports which formed the basis of the Times' story were fabricated — and yet the Times went ahead with the story anyway. 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."

When asked to respond to the Smoking Gun's investigation, Sabatino wrote in a March 20 letter that "there is a lot of lies cirulating arround [sic] right now. But this is all going to backfire on Puff. I know him too well."

Among other claims, in his lawsuit against Combs, Sabatino said he did not have prior knowledge of the plot to ambush Shakur, but that he "does not contest that he was present at Quad Studios" on the night of the shooting, even though his name has never come up in any reports on the attack.

According to the Smoking Gun, the boast is a typical piece of self-mythologizing from Sabatino, who at one point reportedly claimed that as a teenager he was sent west by Combs to broker a peace deal between Bad Boy Records and Suge Knight's Death Row Records.

[This story was originally published at 3:15 pm E.T. on 3.26.2008]

• Tupac Story May Be Based On Faked FBI Documents

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Tupac Shakur
Photo: Tim Mosenfelder/ImageDirect

On one hand, Chuck Philips has a Pulitzer Prize, winning the coveted journalism award in 1999 for beat reporting. On the other hand, many believe the Los Angeles Times writer has brought the veracity of his work into question with two bombshell hip-hop stories — the first in 2002, reporting that the Notorious B.I.G. personally offered his gun to the Crip gang member who murdered Tupac Shakur, and on Monday, Philips claimed that Biggie and Sean "Diddy" Combs were aware of the 1994 plot to ambush Shakur the night he was shot and wounded as he entered Quad Studios.

Those two articles sparked considerable controversy. His allegations are at times hard to believe, and he has drawn criticism for largely citing unnamed sources. And many question why an older white man is the one pursuing the case of two murdered black hip-hip icons.

But Philips, for his efforts, also receives praise for his devotion to the case, when many believe police seem less interested each year. Readers lavish him with kind words for bringing light to two of the darkest moments in hip-hop history. Then there's his own appreciation for black culture: Philips cites Miles Davis as one of his favorite interviews, recognizes Dr. Dre's talents, and has a love for '70s funk.

It's certainly a complex beat he chases, often prone to failure, he said. And in the end, he leaves it up to his gut instincts that the people he talks to are telling him the truth. It could make him right — or it could make him horribly wrong in the end. Who knows for sure? But Philips stands by his methods.

Here, Philips talks to MTV News about his philosophy on using anonymous sources, when to trust stories — no matter how outrageous the claims may be — and why he keeps trying to figure out this story.

On sourcing: Philips often uses anonymous sources, referencing nothing about a source's physical description and rarely citing just how close the source is to the story. His reliance on FBI-informant information in his most recent story leads many to question how he could trust someone who is "snitching." He said he has to protect his sources from death and that even a slight clue could ID them.

"When you talk to people who are involved with the crime, which is what I do, they're either directly involved or peripherally involved," Philips explained. "Probably the farthest I've ever gotten is the best friend of the guy that was involved, and was told everything. ... In this one, and in many other stories, I've had direct contact with people who I believe are the criminals. And the deal I work out with them, I don't go with 'the guy with green eyes and he's from Brooklyn.' I don't think that matters at all. It doesn't help identify the individual. But these qualifiers to me, the issue is, do you have the right source? I don't think it leads to more trust. Because it doesn't matter where he lived or what position he had. I think the problem with that is that the people who would like to kill them, it matters very much. But when you're writing about a murder, some of the people who talked to me would be killed if they were identified in any way. Frankly, no one has any idea but their family members that they're talking to me. Now I'm at the point where I can give my old stories to the people I approach and say, 'This is how I write, and this is how it will happen. I've never burned anybody, and I'm not gonna burn you.' And most people still won't talk to you. But in this case, I was a lot luckier than that."

Outlandish allegations: Some critics say Philips is being taken for a ride by his informants. Philips, however, said he triple-checks his stories through corroboration.

"I often get approached by a lot of people, and then I talk to a lot of people who I thought knew someone and I find out they're lying," Philips said. "It takes a lot of time to develop. I'm not gonna write it just because someone says it. I have to, in my mind, have double or triple sourcing on something and people who hadn't spoken to each other and I can assure myself that they haven't spoken to each other. Because I've had two people try to set me up. ... I would catch them. But if you have three, you never get tripped up. I learned that writing about the music business, because I'd write about big deals that were coming out or a firing that would happen five days before it happened. And you had to be right about that sh--, because those guys would sue your ass. But in this case, I don't write anything until I feel it's confident, it's true. I know all kinds of stuff I don't write about. But then if I know that it's true, I'm gonna write about it. But I never tell anybody what it is, because it's unfair if it's not true. And there are people that will lie to you. Same thing happens in the music business, when I wrote about that. Same thing happened in the government. The police lie to you all the time. Police write up documents that are completely false, and you can print that. As a journalist, if they write up a police report that's false, you can put that on the front page of the newspaper and not be sued, because it's a police document.

"People are talking about that document," Philips added. "I had all of the information before I got the FBI document. [Editor's note: Philips obtained FBI records cited in Monday's story that said an informant told authorities in 2002 that Jimmy Rosemond and James Sabatino set up Shakur.] And when I got the FBI document, that was really like frosting on the cake for me. Because in this document, by somebody who I had never spoke to, I did speak to them eventually before the story ran, but who I didn't know or speak to, he said almost the same thing that I found out. So for me, it's just another resource, but for everybody who reads it, 'Oh, it has to be true. The FBI is sourcing it.' "

His motivation: Is he doing it for fame? Is he cooking up stories to stir the pot? There are plenty in the hip-hop community who just don't understand Philips' pursuit. He said he's been covering the case because it's one of the most important entertainment stories of the past 50 years and it simply interests him.

"I've written a lot abut this story because it fascinates me," Philips said. "I've written about doctors, politicians, music executives ... all these kinds of stories. So why would I make up only this story? I've gotten over it. At first it was shocking to me when people would say that, but they just don't know what you're doing, and that's their prerogative.

"I'm always surprised that young black writers have criticized me sometimes, and they don't go do it," he said of other reporters who aren't willing to tackle the story. "If you're gonna criticize me, go do it. You'll have a lot easier time moving around than I will. Why aren't you out there doing it? I actually don't understand that. But frankly I'm glad nobody else is. You often need a lot of time to go the long way. And then you have to get your gumption back up, to say, 'All right, f--- it,' when you fail and say, 'OK, this isn't it. Now I have to go try these other leads.' It's like a detective, in a sense."

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