By this time in 1996, Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur had practically made full-time careers out of trying to stay out of jail. Shakur failed on that front and was about to head back to the slammer for four months, as he skipped out on doing road clean-up work for a parole violation. He and Snoop managed to keep it together enough to shoot a video, though, for their duet track "2 of Americaz Most Wanted."

"When I wrote it I was so happy that Pac was out of jail. I wanted to let people know I was thinking about my [murder] case and I was thinking about him as well," Snoop said. "Because if they take me away, they've gotta let him go. You can take one of us, but you can't take us both, and if you let us both go, that's when you really did f---ed up."

With a new movie division and East Coast office in New York, plus a restaurant on the drawing board, Snoop and Tupac's label, Death Row Records, was spreading its wings, and Shakur said the rappers were ready.

"There's not two more confident individuals in this business than myself and Snoop," Shakur said. "When people go back to see what we was living like in 1996 and what was going on and how did we feel ... I am betting my life and Dogg's betting his life that it's gonna be our stories that they're listening to. I can guarantee it."

Soundgarden were preparing to return to the racks with their LP Down on the Upside, and this week in 1996 they shot the video for the album's first single, "Pretty Noose." MTV News' Tabitha Soren talked to Seattle's dour sons on the set.

Soren: So what is a pretty noose?

Chris Cornell (vocals): It's just sort of an attractively packaged bad idea. Something that seems great at first but comes back to bite you.

As it turned out, bassist Ben Shepherd had real firsthand noose experience.

Soren: As a kid you sat around tying nooses?

Shepherd: Yeah. We also had like a sailor's book at home. We used to sit around and tie a whole bunch of different knots.

Soren: That doesn't sound quite as morbid.

Cornell: So what are you saying? You didn't sit around and tie little nooses and hang your Barbie off a light shade?

With Down on the Upside carrying such songs as "Pretty Noose," "Zero Change" and "Blow Up the Outside World," it seemed the upcoming album promised to be pretty dark, which was of course the case.

Kim Thayil (guitarist): It's a little bit sad. It's a little bit creepy. What's new? 

Cornell: If you write a song about feeling bad in a particular way, and then somebody hears that song and they think, "Wow, I really identify with the way you felt when you wrote this," or "If there's somebody else out there that feels like me, I'm not the only one," what happens? They feel better. So even if it's a dark theme, it could actually have a positive effect.

This week in Atlanta, the members of TLC began their week in Federal Bankruptcy Court. The group's T-Boz said it still hadn't seen any money from the multiplatinum album CrazySexyCool. TLC's label said the trio were using the bankruptcy claims to renegotiate or get out of their long-term recording contract.

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