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Suge Knight Files Lawsuit Claiming Dr. Dre Tried To Have Him Killed
Suge Knight in court with his attorney. He is currently facing charges of murder and attempted murder. (Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)
Former Death Row Records mogul Suge Knight, who is currently in jail for charges of murder and attempted murder, has filed a new lawsuit that claims Dr. Dre tried to have him killed. The suit seeks $300 million from Dre.
The allegation that Dre hired a hitman to kill Knight (and conspired with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department) is not new, but the newest nugget is that it came in the wake of Dr. Dre's sale of Beats by Dre to Apple for $3 billion. According to TMZ, Dre and Knight have a lifetime deal where Knight is entitled to 30% of Dre's entertainment earnings. Dre, supposedly, wanted to have Knight removed from the picture because Apple did not want to be associated with him.
Knight claims that this resulted in multiple hits that were put out on him. He cited an incident on the weekend of the 2014 VMAs, when a shooting took place at West Hollywood's 1OAK nightclub at a party hosted by Chris Brown. Earlier this year, Knight sued Brown over medical costs related to injuries he sustained in the shooting.
Knight also claims that Dre and Universal Pictures—who released the film Straight Outta Compton—hired Cle "Bone" Sloan $300,000 to kill Knight. Sloan was injured in the fatal hit-and-run at Tam's Burgers in Compton, where Knight ran over and killed Terry Carter. Knight was reportedly unhappy with his portrayal in Straight Outta Compton and showed up at a shoot for the film at Tam's Burgers before the hit-and-run took place. Suge later claimed that he was trying to escape an attack by Sloan.
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Suge is suing Dre, Apple, Universal and Tam's. In a statement to TMZ, an attorney for Dre said, "Given that Dre has had zero interaction with Suge since leaving Death Row Records in 1996, we hope that Suge's lawyer has lots of malicious prosecution insurance."
Dr. Dre and Suge Knight co-founded Death Row Records in 1991 after Dre left N.W.A.
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