Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac Shakur and Christopher ‘Biggie’ Wallace.
Netflix, created 2018
Most people - even those not part of the US black music scene world - will have heard of the shocking late ‘90s murders of West Coast rapper Tupac Shakur and his East Coast counterpart Christopher Wallace, aka Biggie Smalls.
At the time, they created storms in the rap scene. Both were hero worshipped by tens of thousands of young people who saw them as role models who had carved a path out of the ghetto into a glittering world of glamour. But that world was ugly in parts, and the songs alluded to it - gangsters, guns, drugs. Many of the songs were seen as misogynistic as women featured only as sexual receptacles. And yet, when has bad behaviour ever put off teenagers? From groupies willingly sleeping with pop stars from the ‘60s on to punks seeing riots occur when they played, bad is good, and ‘baaaaad’ *literally* means good in street argot.
The strange thing is that for all the wealth owned by these two prominent icons, no one has yet been imprisoned for the murder of either of them.
Unsolved is a TV drama based on the investigations. Written by Kyle Long (also known for Big Sky (2020) and Suits (2011)), it stars Marcc Rose as the diminutive Tupac, and Wavyy Jonez as the beefy Christopher ‘Biggie’ Wallace.
The investigation of Biggie was in the hands of the Wiltshire branch of the police force initially, and after a month, it was taken over by LAPD duo Detective Russell Poole - played here with his obsession with the case virtually throbbing by the end by Jimmi Simpson - and Detective Fred Miller (Jamie McShane.)
The murders were always going to be political because they were of notorious Black stars. When the white pairing of Poole and Miller take over the case, the Black detective at Wiltshire is initially suspicious. But Poole’s determination to get to the truth, whatever it is, is apparent. In the first few hours of the case, he has to remind his somewhat more lackadaisical police partner that Biggie and Tupac were victims.
But this drama is more ambitious than a simple police procedural. Several years after the police started the investigation into the murder of Wallace, Wallace’s mother Voletta, played here with restrained emotion by Aisha Hinds, launches a lawsuit against the LAPD alleging that the reason they have not arrested anyone in connection with the murder of her son is because they are protecting implicated LA police officers. Where did Voletta get this idea? From Detective Russell Poole amongst others. He became so tied up in loose ends of the case that he jumped on a theory that several LAPD police officers, who doubled as security for the record company to which Tupac was signed, were involved in the murder of Biggie Wallace.