March 3, 1991 Los Angeles, California police officers are caught on camera beating Rodney King almost to death following a high speed chase. The nation was outraged, in particular the black and hispanic communities because this type of activity was far too common in their neighborhoods. On April 29, 1992 all four officers accused of excessive force were acquitted, setting off a powder keg of racial tension, destruction, death and mayhem in L.A..
In total 53 people were killed, thousands were injured and an estimated $1billion dollars in damage was done to the city.
Amongst those running around at that time mad, angry and looking for somone or something to take their anger out on was Kool G Rap, Sir Jinx of the Lench Mob and Tupac Shakur.
"Me and Pac met down in the L.A. riots. I was out there working on my album [Live and Let Die]. We was out there in the riots poppin burners off and all that sh*t. Me, Pac, Jinx and my man Guch," G Rap says. "After the Rodney King verdict and everybody went f*cking ballistic. You know what... everybody was bugging out and doing they own thing they didn't notice no Pac & G Rap at that time."
"Pac was expressing his sense of anger for the verdict, he was shooting out store windows and sh*t like that. As dangerous as the hood was back then and to this day. It seemed like this was one of the only times you could feel safe if you was a black person because all the anger was directed towards whites at this time, because it seemed like the verdict made it a race issue. Where you had 12 all white jurors and you had videotape documented evidence of what happened to this man, so it became a race issue."
