Being behind bars has never prevented Marion “Suge” Knight from taking potshots (and more) at people, but he seems to be after a more figurative pound of flesh these days. According to TMZ, Knight has filed a lawsuit against Dr. Dre, in which he alleges that his Death Row Records co-founder hired a hitman to have him killed. And he’s looking for a serious payday from Dre: the damages sought are about $300 million.
There’s a lot of bad blood between Knight and Dre, including yet another multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Dre over Knight’s portrayal in Straight Outta Compton. In that case, Dre shares the blame with Ice Cube, but Knight’s latest lawsuit makes far more nefarious claims against the Aftermath Entertainment founder. First of all, Knight says that his “lifetime management deal” with Dre was still very much in place when Apple bid $3 billion on Beats Electronics in 2014. That means Knight is entitled to 30% of that deal, which is roughly $300 million, something that the currently-incarcerated former mogul claims didn’t sit well with Dre—or Apple, for that matter. Knight’s complaint alleges that the electronics giant “didn’t want its brand associated with Suge.” This purportedly made Dre desperate enough to pay someone to kill Knight.
This would all sound pretty paranoid, if it weren’t for the fact that Knight was shot six times in August 2014 at a VMAs pre-party hosted by Chris Brown (that is, until you remember that this is Suge Knight we’re talking about). In their investigation, the police supposedly questioned a man named T-Money, who claimed to have been hired by Dr. Dre to do the deed. But no one was ever charged with the attack on Knight, and now he awaits trial for the murder of Terry Carter and attempted murder of Cle “Bone” Sloan. But while Knight says Sloan jumped him on the same day that he got into a fight with Dre on the set of Straight Outta Compton, he swears the whole vehicular assault and homicide was an accident.