It’s been almost 28 years since Eazy-E passed away from complications due to AIDS. And in that time, a conspiracy theory has been floating around that Suge Knight injected the late rapper with the HIV virus.
Fellow N.W.A. rapper Ice Cube shared his thoughts on this theory in a recent episode of Logan Paul’s Impaulsive podcast. Paul’s co-host, Mike Majlak breached the topic of Suge allegedly injecting Eazy, which Cube immediately questioned.
“How would [Suge Knight] do that?” he asked around the 32:45 minute mark of the video above. “And Eazy would never tell anybody?”
“Maybe Eazy didn’t even know," Majlak responded. "‘Cause you just poke somebody and they don’t even know. Maybe they were at a club or some shit.”
“Nah, I think if somebody poked you with one of them goddamn needles, you’d know,” Cube said. “You’d know. I mean, I’m just saying, just say this happened, Eazy would tell somebody, ‘This motherfucker poked me with some shit.'”
Cube continued, “Now, if he was unconscious and—I don’t know. … If Eazy would have known he got poked, he would’ve said something. If he didn’t know he got poked, then the conspiracy lives on.”
When Cube was asked if he would put such a thing past Suge, he responded, “I don’t put shit past nobody.”
The conjectures about Eazy-E’s HIV diagnosis come from his seemingly vicious rivalry with Suge and Death Row, a swift deterioration of Eazy's health, and a 2003 Jimmy Kimmel interview with Suge after he was released from jail.
During the interview, Suge specifically referenced injecting someone with AIDS as a means to kill them, rather than shooting them.
“See, technology is so high, so if you shoot somebody, you go to jail forever. You don’t want to go to jail forever,” he said around the 2:05 minute mark of the video below. “They have a new thing out. They have this stuff they called—they get blood from somebody with AIDS, and they shoot you with it. That’s a slow death. The Eazy-E thing. You know what I mean?”
Eazy-E was 31 years old when he died on March 26, 1995, from AIDs-induced pneumonia. He revealed his diagnosis during a news conference just days before, after finding out he was ill from being hospitalized due to a brutal cough.
At the time of his death. Eazy’s Ruthless Records, home to N.W.A., was feuding with Suge and Dr. Dre’s upstart, Death Row Records. Ice Cube left Ruthless after alleging he wasn’t being inadequately compensated and Dre did the same. Suge then allegedly muscled Eazy into breaking Dre’s contract in a violent manner—threatening him with baseball bats and lead pipes.
In 2015, Eazy’s son, Yung Eazy, also fed into the conspiracy theory when he addressed the possibility that Suge killed his father—and that Cube’s 1993 album Lethal Injection was a subliminal nod to Eazy’s manner of death.
“I’ve been known my pops was killed,” Yung Eazy wrote on Instagram. “His death never added up 2 what ppl have always said maybe they think we’re idiots blind to the truth idk….but 4 u new fans, youngsters & ppl who just don’t know much.”
He continued: “Notice in #StraightOuttaCompton Eazy did not get sick until after the studio incident with suge and look how he acknowledged & admits on this interview with #JimmyKimmelinjecting ppl instead of shooting them is a new thing that’s done.
“Oh n let’s not touch the topic on Ice Cube naming his album ‘Lethal Injection’ #FreeYourMind #RipEazyE #EazyE #FuckSugeKnight.”
In 2018, Suge was sentenced to 28 years in prison: 22 years for voluntary manslaughter, and six years for it being Suge’s third strike under California’s three-strikes law. He won’t be eligible for parole until October 2034.
