Nearly three decades after one of music's most enduring mysteries began, a Las Vegas courtroom is finally hearing the case of who killed Tupac Shakur. Jury selection opened on Monday in the trial of Duane "Keffe D" Davis, 63, a former leader of the South Side Compton Crips street gang, who is charged with murder with a deadly weapon with intent to promote or assist criminal gang activity. Prosecutors allege Davis ordered the drive-by shooting that killed the 25-year-old rapper on 7 September 1996 and supplied the weapon used. He has pleaded not guilty and faces life in prison without parole if convicted. Opening arguments are expected to begin on 17 August, with the proceedings anticipated to last around a month.

The trial brings back into focus one of the most turbulent chapters in American popular culture: the bitter East Coast versus West Coast rap rivalry of the 1990s. Shakur, born in New York City and raised partly in Harlem and Baltimore before relocating to northern California, had signed with Death Row Records — the Los Angeles-based label founded by Marion "Suge" Knight and affiliated with the Mob Piru Bloods street gang. His main rival was Christopher "The Notorious B.I.G." Wallace, signed to Sean "Diddy" Combs' Bad Boy Records on the East Coast. Prosecutors say Bad Boy had hired Davis's South Side Compton Crips as security, placing the two gangs on opposing sides. The fatal night began when Shakur and Knight attended a Mike Tyson boxing match at the MGM Grand casino in Las Vegas. After the fight, the pair and members of their entourage attacked Davis's nephew, Orlando Anderson, a Crips member, in what police described as retaliation for an earlier assault on a Death Row employee. Hours later, a white Cadillac pulled alongside Knight's BMW on a Las Vegas street and opened fire. Shakur was struck four times and died six days later. Anderson, though briefly questioned, was never charged; he was killed in an unrelated shooting in 1998.

The case stalled for decades due to a lack of physical evidence, uncooperative witnesses — many of whom were later killed in gang-related violence — and what Shakur's entourage described as an initially mishandled police investigation. What ultimately revived it was Davis himself. In 2019 he co-authored a memoir, Compton Street Legend, in which he recounted being in the front passenger seat of the Cadillac and passing a pistol to those in the back seat, though he stopped short of naming the shooter. He made similar statements in media interviews and in a 2008 conversation with police during an unrelated inquiry into the still-unsolved murder of The Notorious B.I.G. A Nevada judge ruled those public disclosures broke an earlier immunity arrangement Davis had reached with law enforcement, paving the way for his 2023 arrest.

The case now hinges almost entirely on Davis's own words — and his subsequent efforts to walk them back. He now claims he was in Los Angeles, not Las Vegas, on the night of the shooting, says he never read the memoir that bears his name, and insists a ghostwriter embellished the account to boost sales. "I did not write that book," Davis told a local television station last week. "A ghost writer wrote that." His legal team has argued the memoir is partly fictionalised and cannot be treated as a direct confession. Everyone else said to have been in the Cadillac that night has since died, leaving no corroborating witnesses. Trial attorney Shaun Kent noted the unusual nature of the prosecution's evidence: "The two biggest pieces of evidence against Keffe D came from Keffe D."

The proceedings are expected to feature testimony from several high-profile witnesses, potentially including Suge Knight, described as the last known surviving witness present at the shooting. Davis has also publicly alleged that Combs — himself currently incarcerated on separate charges — offered him one million dollars to kill both Shakur and Knight, a claim that has added a further layer of complexity to an already convoluted case. Meanwhile, Shakur's stepbrother Maurice has filed a separate civil wrongful death lawsuit, arguing that others involved in the killing have avoided accountability for 30 years. For many, whatever verdict emerges is unlikely to feel like full closure on a crime that transformed hip-hop and left a permanent mark on American culture.