Like Knight and Day?

Some social critics see him as a thug who made hundreds of millions by debasing rap with the gangsta aesthetic. Friends insist he's a "good-hearted brother" who held massive Mother's Day brunches for single moms in the 'hood. He sees himself as a generous soul whom others -- rappers, lawyers, mega-corporations -- took advantage of when times got tough.

"I'm not going to sit up here and tell you all the stories about me aren't true," Knight says. "Did Suge Knight kick a little ass? I kicked a lot of ass. What person in the inner city doesn't fight? I don't want to be the one who has his lunch money taken. I'd rather be full."

But not so long ago, he says, he sat up in church at City of Refuge in Los Angeles, listening to his minister, Noel Jones, and Bishop T.D. Jakes preach about letting go of the past. Knight decided that that is what he would do. Let go.

"I want to serve Death Row its final meal," he says. Still, he says, he's going to fight for its catalogue. But ultimately it might be a bankruptcy judge who flips the switch.

Gangsta Rap Goes Mainstream

From the beginning, Knight cloaked Death Row Records with a murderous mystique. "People were buying into the image," he says, "which was entertainment." The label, with its logo of a man in an electric chair, got its start in 1991 when Knight, a former college football star, concert promoter and celebrity bodyguard, met Dre, a.k.a. Andre Young, who was then a member of the seminal group N.W.A. Suge brought brains, brawn and the bucks; Dre brought the beats, sleepy, funk-laden grooves and quirky synths. With the 1992 release of Dre's classic, platinum-selling "The Chronic" -- introducing Calvin Broadus, a.k.a. Snoop Doggy Dogg -- Death Row's rep was firmly established as the sound of West Coast rap. Before then, others such as Ice-T and Schoolly D had rapped about pimping and criminal exploits, but Death Row took gangsta mainstream.

By the mid-'90s, Death Row was the rap world's biggest-selling label. Suge proclaimed it "the Motown of the '90s." But critics such as the late C. DeLores Tucker dubbed it "gangster, porno rap."

Knight saw his friends gunned down in the streets or shuffled off to jail, a fact of life, he says, if you're from the ghetto. Most famously, 11 years ago, Tupac Shakur, the world's best-selling rapper, was gunned down in a Las Vegas drive-by, with Suge at his side.

Dr. Dre, disenchanted with thug life, left the label. Snoop followed suit. In 1998, Snoop told police that he felt he was in "grave danger as a result of leaving Death Row Records," according to a memo produced within the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. The rapper also told a sheriff's lieutenant that Knight had Tupac killed, the memo states. But no one was ever charged in the case.

(Knight heatedly denies the claim, which has been promoted by conspiracy theorists for years, and says: "I'm mad at him because he's a snitch." Snoop declined to be interviewed for this article.)

"It's convenient for Suge that most of the people who could hurt him died," says Randall Sullivan, author of "LAbyrinth," which focuses on an LAPD detective's investigation into the murders of Tupac and Biggie. "A lot of people died under mysterious circumstances."

Among the dead, according to the Los Angeles Times: Knight's bodyguard, Aaron "Heron" Palmer, gunned down in Compton in 1997. Vence "V" Buchanan, a purported enemy of Death Row, was killed in 2000. David "Brim Dave" Dudley, a Death Row associate, was killed in 2001.

In spring of 2002, Knight's best friend and bodyguard, Alton "Buntry" McDonald, was shot to death at a gas station. That October, Henry "Hen Dog" Smith, creator of the Death Row logo, was murdered. In 2003, Wardell "Poochie" Fouse, another Death Row associate, was killed in an ambush.