Suge Knight’s reputation consists of stories that would make you never want to look the former CEO and co-founder of Death Row Records in the eye. Threatening rappers, sending goons to kill people, and a rumor that he once dangled Vanilla Ice off a balcony are all things people in the hip-hop community have heard before, but the latest story comes from an unexpected source, Eminem’s former bodyguard.
Byron “Big Naz” Williams is currently promoting his book, Shady Bizzness: Life as Marshall Mathers’ Bodyguard in an Industry of Paper Gangsters, but in an interview with Complex he alleges that Suge Knight once sent gang members to kill Eminem.
It all went down at the 2001 Source Awards, Williams alleges. “That was our first encounter with Suge Knight and his henchman. Em was going to his seat. The way they had the seating was all messed up and the bodyguards couldn’t sit with the artists. I think that was by design ’cause I think they really wanted the artists to be able to network with each other, but it also gives people who got beef with other artists to get at them.”
This seating arrangement left Em open to what would have been a potentially deadly situation if Williams hadn’t noticed the rapper and “all these guys in red shirts” beefing and made his way over. “I had to bust through the middle man and snatch him up. Like, ‘Hey, man. What the hell’s going on up here?’ This is exactly what they said, ‘Death Row, motherf*cker. Death Row.’”
While Williams managed to get Eminem out of the situation, the rapper’s former bodyguard said that he was pretty shaken by the experience. Honestly, who wouldn’t be?!
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