DJ Vlad talks about how he unraveled Tupac's killing 4 years before Keefe D was arrested

DJ Vlad talks about how he looked into the shooting death of Tupac Shakur over the course of several years and concluded that Duane “Keefe D” Davis was the most likely suspect four years before Las Vegas police made the arrest.

Video Transcript

GARIN FLOWERS: You were a big part of researching, interviewing, and just going down this huge journey of finding out what happened to Tupac during his murder. How did you feel when you heard about Keffe D being arrested?

DJ VLAD: I mean, I really didn't feel much. I think, really, this was for the Tupac fans out there. I mean, I felt that I essentially solved this whole case four years ago when I did the first interview with Keefe D in July of 2019. I mean, it was all laid out from beginning to end.

So for me, that was my sense of closure, just as a fan of Pac. Because if you look at my history, the biggest project I did during my career was the Tupac mixtape that was called Rap Phenomenon 2. It won mixtape of the year and everything. And it really kind of gave me a career in hip hop in a way.

So to kind of go full circle to really doing the interview that, essentially, solved the case, I mean, it felt cool. It gave me a sense of closure. But this was like four years ago. With the arrest happening and everyone sort of discovering this for the first time, this was really, I think, more for the fans out there, which is-- I mean, there's a lot of Pac fans, so it makes sense.

GARIN FLOWERS: Police have tapes of confessing to everything-- the shooter, him being in the car. What happened? Why was there not a decision made on an arrest back in the '90s?

DJ VLAD: I mean, I interviewed Greg Kading about this, and I asked him the same question. And from his point of view-- and he wasn't involved in the case at that point-- was that during that time, 1996, Vegas was trying to reinvent itself as a family destination. This was like Circus Circus and casinos like that, that were more friendly-- designed for kids as well as adults, was sort of being pushed as the new Las Vegas as opposed to what we see now, which is more of a "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas." So that was totally different in '96.

So I think that a long, prolonged investigation of a bunch of rappers in LA shooting each other in the middle of the street in Las Vegas would have gone against what the overall financial goal was for that city. And I think because of that, they just sort of brushed it under the rug and let it go, from my point of view. But ultimately, who knows. You'd have to ask law enforcement during that time as to why they made that decision.

GARIN FLOWERS: Why did you decide to tackle this monumental case and really dive into some dangerous territory? This is a very contentious case that had a lot of gang members, a lot of different things. What made you want to go down this journey?

DJ VLAD: Well, I mean, it was something that I was sincerely interested in. Back in 2007, I was hanging out with this one guy who-- I'm not going to say who his name was, but he was a Crip. And we were hanging out, and he was like, yeah, Orlando killed Tupac. Everyone in Compton knows it. Everyone in LA knows it. It's like the worst kept secret in LA. Like, everybody knows it.

He, I believe, either was friends with him or knew someone close to him. And it was just, he kind of laid out the whole thing. And I'm like, damn. Like, OK, you kind think that, but you never really-- that was the first time I actually heard it.

So with that, once the Keffe D confession tapes were leaked out by Greg Kading, it was like, oh, now, you actually have someone confessing to it that was actually there. And then, I got in contact-- I knew someone who knew Keffe D, so he put us in contact with him. And I come to find out that they had just written a book, him and his co-writer Yusuf had just written a book about it. We got a copy of the book. We read through it. And it was like, he lays out the whole thing.

So then, the next step was, hey, do you want to do an interview about the book, with the writer actually was right there off camera. So yeah, I mean, I just jumped into it. But this is not-- I interviewed with Piers Morgan yesterday, and he asked me, do I feel scared or a certain level of danger.

I mean, this is something that I've always covered, and this is the type of topics I've delved into. I've interviewed Sammy The Bull, who admitted to 19 murders. I interviewed the guy that was involved in Michael Jordan's dad's murder. This is really the type of deep dives that I've been doing over the last 15 years.

GARIN FLOWERS: So if Keffe D has implicated his nephew Orlando Anderson as the shooter, what is Keffe D's connection now? What is his connection to the murder if he's saying that he saw someone else do the shooting?

DJ VLAD: Well, he was in the car. He was in the car. And he has admitted to some level of involvement in the whole incident. Whatever that is really up to authorities to figure out, how liable he is in terms of the whole situation. I don't believe he was the driver.

And Orlando, his nephew, but I was just reading through the grand jury papers this morning. And one of the witnesses was actually saying that Big Dre was the shooter, but he let Orlando take the credit for it because Orlando was the one who got jumped and whose reputation would have been tarnished if he would have just gotten beat up by a rapper and went back to Compton. So yeah, it really remains to be seen.

And just because Keffe got arrested doesn't mean that Keffe's getting convicted. At the end of the day, it's just an arrest. Lots of people get arrested. You and I can get arrested this afternoon. It doesn't mean that we'll go to prison. It means that we'll have to go through the due process. And at the end of the day, it's up to law enforcement to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he was involved in the way that he said it, as opposed to him just kind of making up and saying certain things in order to get out of doing life in prison.