Suge Knight Weighs In On Dr. Dre’s Chronic Influencing Notorious B.I.G.’s Ready To Die

Yesterday, we linked you to Rolling Stone’s conversation with Death Row Records co-founder Marion “Suge” Knight. While the published interview focused on Tha Row’s second release, Snoop Doggy Dogg’s 1993 debut Doggystyle, which just turned 20 years old.

The writer of the rare Knight interview, Paul “Gooch” Cantor, self-published the outtakes on his own Medium platform. Interestingly enough, Suge had some revealing thoughts on The Notorious B.I.G.’s 1994 debut, Ready To Die, pulling from Dr. Dre’s The Chronic. In speaking about that, and Jermaine Dupri’s So So Def moves of the early ’90s, you get some rare context leading up to Suge’s ’95 Source Awards tirade at the podium.

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“What usually hurts these guys is that people steal their style and sound before they get famous. Tha Dogg Pound was coming out, then all of a sudden Kris Kross starting hanging with them and they started rapping like Daz [Dillinger] and Kurupt. Da’Brat started thinking she was Snoop [Dogg]. That’s how she got on. They’re mimicking the shit that already been done. And not knocking 50 [Cent], 50 came out and had an incredible album, but at the same time 50’s record is all West Coast. If you look at Biggie’s album, Biggie’s album is all West Coast. The first album. When they did the Biggie album, I helped them with that fucking record. I let Puff use every [The Chronic] sample on [Ready To Die], the hottest record of all time, and didn’t charge them. To show some love. Like here. It ain’t shit. We do this shit like we do.”

What do you think?

Read the full outtakes.

Related: Snoop Doggy Dogg’s Doggystyle & The Death Row Records Reign (Food For Thought)