Marion "Suge" Knight isn't afraid that anybody's out to get him. But police officials think he probably should be. The 1996 murder of West Coast rapper Tupac Shakur awoke the hip-hop world to the fact that gang violence does not preclude celebrities. While Tupac's death and the later fatal shooting of East Coast rapper Notorious B.I.G. had many touting the mantra "Stop the violence increase the peace" and denouncing the East Coast-West Coast rap frud, the fact of the matter is, the two cases of homicide remain largely ignored by the judicial system, with nobody convicted for either murder. In that sense, the murders are not unlike the many incidents of gang violence that go unnoticed by law officials and the courts. But Tupac and Biggie Smalls were gangsters who had made it big, not having to hustle to make ends meet they had attained the wealth to afford a lifestyle most people can only dream about. During their climb to the top of the charts, they never put away the gangster lifestyle. This time, though, the media paused to examine the high-profile cases that many believe closed. According to a Los Angeles Times article published September 2002, Tupac's and Biggie's deaths were just two more in a chain of retaliatory gang warfare shootings. Murders of Bloods and Crips, Westsiders and Eastsiders, led up to Tupac's shooting and have occurred since Notorious B.I.G's death. Since 1997, there have been eight fatal gang shootings believed to be connected. Four of those were some of Knight's closest associates. Now, said the July 31, 2003 Angeles Times, Suge Knight, 37, might be next on the list of potential victims. In the most recent slaying, gunmen Ambushed Wardell 'Poochie' Fouse, a longtime Knight confidant, on July 24 [2003], firing 10 shots into his back as he rode a motorcycle in Compton, reported Times staff writer Chuck Phillips. The Times reported that while all eight killings remain unsolved, one suspect is a former Death Row bodyguard who was fired by Knight. If I was Suge Knight, I'd be worried someone was to out to get me, Los Angeles County Sherrif's Department Sgt. Fred Reynolds, a gang investigator, told the Times. When so many people so close to you get killed, it's no coincidence. If I was in his shoes, I'd be looking over my shoulder everywhere I went. Knight, however, expressed little, if any, concern to the Times: I don't believe anyone is hunting me. But even if they were, so what? The only guarantee a man has in life is that you are born to die. I'm from the ghetto, where black men get killed every day. I fear no man. Only God. But are these the words of a hardened gangster who is currently serving a 10-month prison sentence for a late June arrest found in violation of his parole all because he punched a parking-lot attendant or are these the words of an entertainer, a rags-to-riches businessman who built a fortune on glamorizing a world of danger, violence and crime? As a boy, his father donned him "Sugar Bear" "Suge" for short for his sweet, easygoing demeanor. Growing up in Compton, Calif.football for Lynwood High and El Camino Community College and was recruited in 1985 by the University of Nevada at Las Vegas but dropped out just before graduating. From there, Knight began to have runnins with the police but finally took a job as a boydguard for a Los Angeles concert promoter. His enterpreneurial side revealed itself, and, in 1992, he opened Death Row Records. Despite financial success, Knight couldn't, like the celebrities he fostered from Tupac to Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg walk away from the gang lifestyle that had embraced him for many years. Knight obviously has an ear for talent, but his hard-knock managemetn style drove many, including Dre, to spawn off onto their own endeavors. And as Knight incorporated his gang lifestyle into his business donning crimson Silk suits, painting the tiles of his swimming pool floor scarlet, hiring Bloods members as body-guards the company crumbled, giving way to violence and trouble with the law. Suge's bodyguards were feared by everybody because people knew what they had done in the past, Bobby Ladd, a former Compton gang investigator, told the Times. They weren't afraid to kill and they let it be known. But, wrote Phillips, "Knight put a different spin on it. He bragged that his company offered a second chance to people shunned by society. Many of his employees had never held a job before. Today, not much is left over from Death Row's heyday. What was once the Beverly Hills headquarters of the hardest, baddest, nobody-else-dared-release rap music in the industry stands empty and unused, its facade riddled with bullet holes and shattered windows from a May drive-by. According to the Times, Knight has missed mortgage payments on the office building, owes $6 million in unpaid taxes, has had his yacht repossessed by a bank and his Staples Center Luxury box revoked. Suge Knight has made a lot of enemies over the years, Time Brennan, another former Compton gang investigator, told the Times. Some of the very people who worked for Suge have now turned against him. The roots for these feuds run very deep in Compton, Sherrif's Department gang investigator Det. Michael Caouetter told the Times. Gang members don't forget a grudge. Word on the street is there's a hit out on Suge Knight.