'Unsolved' Showrunner: Keffe D Should Be Arrested for Tupac's Murder

Tonight, Season 1 of USA Network’s scripted true crime series “Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac and The Notorious B.I.G.” will end with an episode titled “Unsolved?” That sounds about right for creator Kyle Long, who believes it is actually pretty obvious what happened here. At least in the case of the 1996 murder of rapper Tupac Shakur.

“I would say, in regards to the Tupac murder, I think it’s — you know — very clear what happened,” Long told TheWrap in an interview last week. “There’s elements of it that are questionable, but certainly Keffe D and the Southside Crips killed Tupac Shakur. And it is outrageous that Keffe D is not in jail. And that should be in the article.”

“In the [‘Unsolved’] finale, when you see why the whole Keffe D thing, how he had immunity and that — long story short, in real life and in the television show, he had immunity to make this confession to the task force,” Long said of the Southside Crips member and the late Orlando Anderson’s uncle, real name Duane Keith Davis. “When the task force fell apart he still had immunity.”

Also Read: USA Gets Its Own True Crime Anthology Series About the Murders of Tupac and Biggie

“But this guy, this year — no one is talking about this, but I guess people just don’t care about Tupac Shakur, a young black man — he, this guy goes on a documentary this year and tells a version of the same story, he tries to go all cute and say, ‘I don’t know who triggered there,'” Long said. “But he talked about being in the car with the Crips, they specifically went to hunt [Tupac] down and then Tupac gets shot, you just have to say who pulled the trigger.”

However, Long says it ultimately “doesn’t matter that he doesn’t say who pulled the trigger.”

“He went live on television and confessed to being an accessory to murder and the Las Vegas PD, as far as I know, is doing nothing about it,” Long continued. “And I just think it’s outrageous. I just don’t understand it. It makes me upset. And it’s just crazy town to me. It is so wild that a guy can — and I don’t know what kind of lawyer he has telling him to go on this television show and talk about it, but you know, it’s crazy. So that’s my rant about Keffe D and the Tupac murder, like to me, that murder, you could go arrest someone for that right now.”

Also Read: Why USA's Tupac and Biggie Series Doesn't Have Tupac and Biggie Music

Long is referencing an episode of BET’s “Death Row Chronicles” docuseries which aired in February and featured interviews with Davis and former LAPD detective Greg Kading about Shakur’s murder.

Kading, who wrote the book “Murder Rap: The Untold Story of Biggie Smalls & Tupac Shakur Murder Investigations,” is one of the key characters in the show “Unsolved” (played by Josh Duhamel), as he led investigations into the murders of Shakur and Christopher Wallace aka Biggie Smalls. He is also a co-executive producer on the USA series.

Multiple attempts by TheWrap to reach Davis for comment for this story were unsuccessful. All phone calls made to numbers associated with Davis went unreturned or led to disconnected lines. Emails sent to addresses associated with Davis and his relatives went unanswered. Both BET and NBCUniversal did not have current contact information for Davis. Attempts to locate contact information for Davis through arrest records and to reach Wayne Higgins — an attorney who is listed in court documents as having previously represented Davis — were also unsuccessful.

Also Read: 12 Hip-Hop Beefs Ranked, Wack to Best: From Drake v Meek Mill to Biggie v Tupac (Photos)

“Unsolved” chronicles the stories of the police investigations led by Kading (Josh Duhamel) and Detective Russell Poole (Jimmi Simpson) into the murders of Tupac Shakur (Marcc Rose) and Biggie Smalls (Wavyy Jonez).

Long penned the script and executive produces along with director Anthony Hemingway (“The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story”) and Mark Taylor.

See a clip of Davis on the “Death Row Chronicles” above.

The season 1 finale of “Unsolved” airs Tuesday at 10/9 c on USA.

Pamela Chelin contributed to this story.

The Grammys and Black Music: A Timeline of Snubs and Embarrassments (Photos)

The 2018 Grammy nominations were a triumph for diversity, with far more hip-hop and R&B nominees in the top categories than ever before.

In a way, it shouldn't come as a surprise that an organization devoted to supporting and honoring music would recognize the current ascendance of hip-hop as the dominant popular music form. But it is something of a delicious shock, because since they began in the 1950s, the Grammys have not exactly been inclusive.

No hip-hop song, for instance, has ever won Record of the Year or Song of the Year. You could argue that they’ve been shortsighted when it comes to rock music and Latin music and jazz and other genres, too, that there’s an inevitable conservatism that comes from having a huge body of voters considering such a vast musical landscape.

But the decades worth of snubs and oversights are not pretty. Scroll through TheWrap's timeline:
1959

At the first Grammys, the Best Rhythm & Blues Performance category was won by a white group, the Champs, with “Tequila.” Ella Fitzgerald was the only African American nominated in the Record of the Year, Album of the Year and Song of the Year categories, which were won by Domenico Modugno’s “Nel Blu Dipinto di Blu (Volare)” (record and song) and Henry Mancini’s “The Music From Peter Gunn” (album).
William P. Gottlieb/Creative Commons
1968

At the 10th Grammy show, one of the top three awards is finally won by black performers: The Fifth Dimension, who win Record of the Year for “Up, Up and Away,” written by white songwriter Jimmy Webb.
CMA-Marc Gordon Productions-management
1976

After 18 years, Natalie Cole becomes the first black performer to win Best New Artist.
Lawren/Flickr
1981

It's the year of Donna Summer’s “Bad Girls,” Michael Jackson’s “Off the Wall,” Prince’s “Dirty Mind,” Smokey Robinson’s “Crusin’” and the debuts of the Sugarhill Gang and Kurtis Blow. But the Album of the Year, Song of the Year, Record of the Year and Best New Artist awards all go to a wimpy white guy named Christopher Cross.
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1986

Prince is nominated for Album of the Year for the second and last time for “Sign o’ the Times.” That album, “Purple Rain” and “1999” will eventually enter the Grammy Hall of Fame, but he will never win the award
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1988

Public Enemy’s “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back,” the highest ranked hip-hop album in Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, is not nominated for any Grammys. But the Record of the Year and Song of the Year awards do go to a black artist: Bobby McFerrin, for “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”
Steve Jurvetson/Creative Commons
1989

DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince (aka Will Smith) win the first-ever rap Grammy for "Parents Just Don't Understand." The award was not presented during the televised portion of the ceremony, and in protest Smith led a boycott of the show. (But DJ Jazzy Jeff did show up to accept the Grammy.)
1991

More than a decade after rap music began to revolutionize popular music, MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This” becomes the first hip-hop song to receive a Record of the Year nomination. It loses to Phil Collins’ “Another Day in Paradise.”
Philippe Rous from Strasbourg
2006

Kayne West’s “Late Registration” beats Eminem’s “Encore” in the Best Rap Album category. This remains the only one of the seven years in which a white artist was nominated in the category that the white artist did not win.
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2008

Jazz keyboardist Herbie Hancock becomes the most recent black artist to win Album of the Year. He does so for an album of Joni Mitchell songs.
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2010

Taylor Swift’s “Fearless” beats Beyonce’s “I Am … Sasha Fierce” for Album of the Year. This comes four months after she beats Beyonce at the MTV Video Music Awards, where her acceptance speech is interrupted by Kanye West’s infamous “imma let you finish” moment.
Christopher Polk/Getty Images
2014

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis win the Best Rap Album award over Drake, Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar and Kanye West, the sixth time in the 19-year history of the award that a white performer had won it. Macklemore also beats Lamar for Best New Artist, and sends Lamar an apologetic text.
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2015

This time, it’s Beck’s turn to beat Beyonce in the Album of the Year category, with his “Morning Phase” scoring a surprise victory over her self-titled album.
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2016

Grammy voters’ love for Taylor Swift proves embarrassing once more, as her “1989” album beats Kendrick Lamar’s landmark “To Pimp a Butterfly.” Her floppy-haired bestie Ed Sheeran, meanwhile, beats Kendrick in the Song of the Year category.
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2017

And finally, Adele wins Album of the Year for “25,” and immediately uses her speech to say what everybody was thinking: that Beyonce deserved it for “Lemonade,” which she said was “so monumental, and so well thought-out and soul-bearing.”
Kevin Winter/Getty Images
2018

Jay-Z was the most nominated artist, with eight, but didn't win a single Grammy. On his joint album with Beyonce, "Everything Is Love," the song "APESH-T" included the lyric: "Tell the Grammys f--- that zero for eight s---." And while Kendrick Lamar swept the hip-hop awards for "DAMN." he lost Record and Album of the Year to Bruno Mars.
2019

Kendrick Lamar, Drake and Childish Gambino all declined invitations to perform on the show, according to producer Ken Ehrlich. And then Kendrick Lamar's "Black Panther" soundtrack lost in the Album of the Year category to Kacey Musgraves' "Golden Hour" (one of the two non-hip-hop albums among the eight nominees).

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This year’s diverse nominations are a far cry from the Recording Academy’s history of missing the best in soul, R&B and hip-hop

The 2018 Grammy nominations were a triumph for diversity, with far more hip-hop and R&B nominees in the top categories than ever before.

In a way, it shouldn't come as a surprise that an organization devoted to supporting and honoring music would recognize the current ascendance of hip-hop as the dominant popular music form. But it is something of a delicious shock, because since they began in the 1950s, the Grammys have not exactly been inclusive.

No hip-hop song, for instance, has ever won Record of the Year or Song of the Year. You could argue that they’ve been shortsighted when it comes to rock music and Latin music and jazz and other genres, too, that there’s an inevitable conservatism that comes from having a huge body of voters considering such a vast musical landscape.

But the decades worth of snubs and oversights are not pretty. Scroll through TheWrap's timeline:

View In Gallery

The Grammys and Black Music: A Timeline of Snubs and Embarrassments (Photos)

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