Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Admitted He Was ‘Scared’ About Getting Implicated in Tupac’s Murder

Sean 'Diddy' Combs has long faced accusations of being involved in Tupac's death. He said he was worried about this when he first heard the news.

When Sean “Diddy” Combs heard that Tupac Shakur died, he said he began to worry that people would connect him to the death. Diddy has long denied playing any role in Tupac’s death, but he knew people would look to him in the aftermath. He admitted he began to feel scared.

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs worried he would get in trouble over Tupac’s murder

In 1996, Tupac was fatally shot in a drive-by shooting while in the car with Suge Knight. At the time, Diddy and his artist, the Notorious B.I.G. were locked in a fierce rivalry with Tupac. Still, Diddy said Tupac’s death upset him.

“We was shocked at first,” he told Rolling Stone in 1997. “And we was hurt. It was like, ‘Damn, why’d that have to happen?’”

Quickly, though, he began to worry about himself.

“Then we became scared, because we know how the media is,” he said. “The news reports in the early couple of days, all in L.A. and Las Vegas, had our pictures. We were the ones they were pointing their fingers to. Kept on talking about it. I didn’t have nothing to do with Tupac getting killed.”

He said he hadn’t wanted to be in a rivalry with the rapper

The rivalry with Tupac kicked off after the rapper’s 1994 shooting. Diddy didn’t think it was fair that he was in the middle of things.

“[W]hen it came to a situation when you in a war with somebody and you don’t want to fight the war? Then [Tupac] was the worst,” Diddy said. “I was like, ‘Why do I got to be in a war with this motherf***er right here? This motherf***er is crazy,’ There was too many followers to be in a war with him, and we had no time to be in a war. We came in this to make music.”

He said the accusations Tupac leveled against him, like hinting he was involved in the 1994 shooting, were not fair.

“Then you find yourself in the middle of a battlefield, and you ain’t got no helmet, no gun, and you don’t even want to be there,” he said. “You think, ‘S***, I hope when the smoke clears I’m still ahead.’ It was unfair. We ain’t doing s***, and we getting accused of all this s***. We got motherf***ers making records about us, dissing us.”

Tupac’s accused murderer claimed Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs played a role in his death

In 2023, police arrested Duane “Keefe D” Davis for his alleged role in Tupac’s death. He claims he had a conversation in which Diddy spoke about wanting “them dudes’ heads” when talking about Tupac and Knight. Later, Davis alleges that Diddy offered him $1 million to carry out the hit.

While Davis said he never saw the money, he also claimed that Diddy seemed very happy when he heard the news about Tupac’s death.