Paper: Diddy, Rosemond plotted Shakur shooting

NEW YORK - Sean "Diddy" Combs and manager Jimmy "Henchman" Rosemond issued quick and angry denials about a

Los Angeles Times

report released yesterday claiming they were behind the 1994 shooting of Tupac Shakur at Quad Recording Studios in Times Square.

"This story is beyond ridiculous and is completely false," Diddy said in a statement. "Neither Biggie [Smalls, the rapper at the center of Combs' Bad Boy Productions company] nor I had any knowledge of any attack before, during, or after it happened. It is a complete lie . . . I am shocked that the Los Angeles Times would be so irresponsible as to publish such a baseless and completely untrue story."

Rosemond, now CEO of Czar Entertainment, said in a statement, "In the past 14 years, I have not even been questioned by law enforcement with regard to the assault of Tupac Shakur, let alone brought up on charges."

Relying on information from unidentified FBI informants and other interviews, the L.A. Times report claims that Rosemond orchestrated the attack on Shakur on Nov. 30, 1994, as a response to perceived disrespect from the rapper.

According to the Times, the attack was supposed to be a beating of Shakur disguised as a robbery, but escalated once Shakur pulled out a gun, resulting in him being shot five times.

The incident touched off an East Coast-West Coast rivalry in hip-hop that resulted in a string of deaths. Tensions grew so high in March 1996, at the annual Soul Train Awards, that a scuffle broke out between the two camps, halting the show. Six months later, Shakur was shot and killed in Las Vegas. Six months after that, Biggie Smalls (also known as Notorious B.I.G.) was shot and killed after a Soul Train Awards party in Los Angeles.

Both murders remain unsolved; however, L.A. Times reporter Chuck Phillips, who wrote yesterday's report, claimed in another controversial story that Smalls was involved in Shakur's death.

"Chuck Phillips, the writer who in the past has falsely claimed that the Notorious Biggie Smalls was in Las Vegas when Tupac was murdered and that Biggie supplied the gun that killed Tupac - only to be proven wrong as Biggie was in New Jersey recuperating from a car accident, has reached a new low by employing fourth-hand information from desperate jailhouse informants along with ancient FBI reports to create this fabrication," Rosemond said in a statement.

No one was ever charged in the 1994 attack on Shakur.

Now, the Times reports that informants allege it was orchestrated by Rosemond and promoter James Sabatino to, among other things, "curry favor" with Combs. Part of the motive, the story said, was that Rosemond and Sabatino wanted Shakur to leave Interscope Records to sign with Bad Boy, the then-fledgling company of Combs.

But Shakur had refused. *