The man who built Death Row Records into the most feared label in 1990s rap is Marion “Suge” Knight, a former college football player from Compton who helped sell millions of records by Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur. He lost the label in a 2006 bankruptcy, survived several shootings and is now serving a 28-year prison sentence for the 2015 killing of Terry Carter outside Tam’s Burgers in Compton. Here is his full story, from Compton and the NFL to the courtroom, his family and his money.
| Date of Birth | April 19, 1965 |
|---|---|
| Age | 61 years |
| Nationality | American |
| Zodiac Sign | Aries |
| Occupation | Record Executive, Former Football Player |
| Full Name | Marion Hugh Knight Jr. |
| Birthplace | Compton, California |
| Known For | Co-founding Death Row Records (1991) |
| Education | Lynwood High School; El Camino College; UNLV |
| NFL | Los Angeles Rams replacement player (1987) |
| Ex-Wife | Sharitha Lee Golden (married 1989) |
| Children | Taj, Arion, Suge Jacob, Sosa, Bailei, Andrew, Posh and Legend |
| Prison Sentence | 28 years (October 4, 2018), voluntary manslaughter |
| Held At | Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility, San Diego |
| Parole Eligibility | October 2034 |
PinkPantheressBiography
Marion Hugh Knight Jr. was born on April 19, 1965, in Compton, California, the youngest of three children. His father, Marion Knight Sr., was a singer, and he gave his son the childhood nickname “Sugar Bear,” which was later cut down to “Suge,” according to Biography.com. His mother is named Maxine.
Compton in the 1970s shaped how he saw the world. “As soon as I was old enough, I told myself that I’d never live or end up dying in a place like that,” he told The Guardian in 2001. In the same interview he added, “I made up my mind that I wanted everything, and nothing would stop me.”
Sport was his first way out. He was a football and track star at Lynwood High School, where he graduated in 1983. He then played on a scholarship at El Camino College from 1983 to 1985 before moving to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he spent two seasons as a defensive end. He did not finish his degree.
He went undrafted in the 1987 NFL Draft and was cut from the Los Angeles Rams’ training camp. He still got onto an NFL field that year, playing two games for the Rams as a replacement player during the 1987 players’ strike.
Career
After football, Knight worked as a concert promoter and as a bodyguard for celebrities, including R&B star Bobby Brown. In 1989 he set up his own music publishing company. His first big payday came from a fight over royalties to Vanilla Ice’s 1990 hit “Ice Ice Baby,” which Knight said used material written by his client. Vanilla Ice later signed royalties over to him after a meeting on a hotel balcony. Vanilla Ice has denied the story that he was dangled over the edge, saying only that Knight threatened him.
Death Row Records
In 1991, Knight co-founded Death Row Records with Dr. Dre, The D.O.C. and Dick Griffey. He promised to make it “the Motown of the ’90s.” In 1992, Jimmy Iovine’s Interscope Records agreed a $10 million deal to finance and distribute the label.
The hits came fast. Dr. Dre‘s The Chronic (1992) sold about 5.7 million copies worldwide and went triple platinum in the US. Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle (1993) opened at No. 1 and went quadruple platinum. At its peak, Death Row was making more than $100 million a year.
In October 1995, Knight posted $1.4 million bail to get Tupac Shakur out of prison, and Tupac signed with Death Row. His double album All Eyez on Me came out in February 1996, went to No. 1 and was later certified Diamond, meaning 10 million units in the US.
The Fall of Death Row
The label started to fall apart in 1996. Dr. Dre walked away in March 1996 to start Aftermath Entertainment. On September 7, 1996, Tupac was shot in Las Vegas while riding in a BMW that Knight was driving, and he died six days later. Knight was grazed in the head. Snoop Dogg left in 1998, and the label never got back to its early level.
Money trouble followed. On April 4, 2006, Knight and Death Row filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The label’s listed unsecured creditors included Lydia and Michael Harris ($107 million), the IRS ($6.9 million), Koch Records ($3.4 million) and Interscope ($2.5 million). In July 2006, a federal judge ordered a trustee to take over Death Row, citing gross mismanagement.
On January 15, 2009, Canadian company WIDEawake Entertainment won the label at a bankruptcy auction for $18 million, Pollstar reported, citing Variety. The deal included the masters for The Chronic, Doggystyle and All Eyez on Me. The catalog later passed to Entertainment One in 2013, to toy maker Hasbro when it bought eOne in 2019, and to Blackstone-backed MNRK in 2021. In February 2022, Snoop Dogg bought the Death Row brand from MNRK.
Knight has kept talking from prison. In October 2023 he launched Collect Call With Suge Knight, a weekly podcast recorded by phone with The Source founder Dave Mays and released by Breakbeat Media. His 2023 claims about Snoop Dogg and Daz Dillinger set off a public war of words, covered in our piece on the Daz Dillinger and Suge Knight feud.
Controversies and Legal Cases
Knight’s legal record runs from the early 1990s to today. In 1995 he was sentenced to five years’ probation for assaulting two rappers at a Hollywood studio in 1992. The same year, at the Source Awards in New York, he took a shot at Sean “Puffy” Combs from the stage, telling any artist who did not want an executive producer dancing in their videos and rapping on their records to “come to Death Row!” Many saw it as the opening shot of the East Coast and West Coast feud.
The Las Vegas night that killed Tupac also cost Knight his freedom. Hours before the shooting, he was caught on video in a fight with Crips member Orlando Anderson at the MGM Grand. That broke his probation. On February 28, 1997, he was sentenced to nine years in prison. He was released early from prison on August 6, 2001, and went back for about ten months in 2003 for breaking parole.
He was shot several times over the years. In August 2005 he was shot in the leg at Kanye West’s pre-VMA party in Miami, and he later sued West. On August 24, 2014, he was shot six times at a pre-VMA party at the 1OAK nightclub in West Hollywood. He survived and refused to help the police. In October 2014, he and comedian Katt Williams were charged with robbery over a photographer’s camera in Beverly Hills.
The 2015 Killing of Terry Carter
The case that sent him to prison for good happened on January 29, 2015. After an argument near the set of the film Straight Outta Compton, Knight drove his pickup truck into two men in the parking lot of Tam’s Burgers in Compton. Terry Carter, 55, a friend of Knight’s and co-founder of Heavyweight Records, was killed. Filmmaker Cle Sloan was badly hurt. Knight said he was trying to get away from an attack.
Bail was set at $25 million and later cut to $10 million. The trial was delayed again and again while Knight changed lawyers and raised health problems. In 2017 he was also charged with threatening Straight Outta Compton director F. Gary Gray.
On September 20, 2018, days before his murder trial, Knight pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter. On October 4, 2018, Judge Ronald Coen sentenced him to 28 years in prison, according to the Associated Press. The DA’s office said the 11-year maximum for manslaughter was doubled under California’s three-strikes law, with five more years for a serious and violent felony and one year for using the truck as a deadly weapon. The robbery and criminal threats cases were dismissed as part of the deal.
Civil Judgments
The biggest money case against him goes back to Death Row’s start. Lydia Harris said she and her husband, Michael “Harry-O” Harris, put money into the label in 1989 and were pushed out once it took off. In 2005, a Los Angeles court awarded her a $107 million judgment against Knight and Death Row. The judgment was voided in September 2019, reinstated that December and affirmed by Judge David Sotelo on March 2, 2020, Fox 11 Los Angeles reported. “This is a very old case with big names and big numbers,” the judge said.
Terry Carter’s widow, Lillian, and daughters Crystal and Nekaya sued Knight for wrongful death. The first civil trial ended in a mistrial on June 22, 2022, when jurors split 7-5 in favor of finding him liable, NBC Los Angeles reported. In April 2025, days before a retrial, Knight agreed to pay the family $1.5 million.
He spoke by video from prison at that hearing. “Terry was a friend of mine. It definitely wasn’t done intentionally,” he said, according to Okayplayer. He added, “I didn’t want to put the family through more pain. It’s not that I did anything wrong,” and “I do owe the family an apology because of this thing they had to go through.”
The Tupac Murder Trial
In 2026, Duane “Keffe D” Davis went on trial in Las Vegas for Tupac’s murder, and Knight was named as a possible prosecution witness. He told ABC News in August 2026 that he would not testify. “This trial has nothing to do with me and if somebody brings me there, it’s gonna hurt whoever brings me there,” he said. He added, “I am not going to be responsible for sending another man to prison for the rest of his life.”
He also told ABC News, “My loyalty to Tupac can never be compromised,” and called Tupac “my brother.” In a jailhouse interview with TMZ that month, he said of the shooting, “This was assassination. It wasn’t over no chain. It wasn’t over no colors.” On August 31, 2026, the jury found Davis guilty of first-degree murder.
Awards and Honors
Most of the honors from Knight’s era went to his artists and records. At the 1995 Source Awards, he accepted Soundtrack of the Year for Above the Rim, the Death Row soundtrack. Dr. Dre won the Grammy for Best Rap Solo Performance in 1994 for “Let Me Ride” from The Chronic. All Eyez on Me is one of the few rap albums certified Diamond by the RIAA.
Personal Life
Knight’s only legal marriage was to Sharitha Lee Golden, whom he married in Las Vegas on November 3, 1989. Their daughter, Arion, was born in 1993, and the couple later divorced. You can read more about her in our profile of Sharitha Knight.
He later had a relationship with R&B singer Michel’le, Dr. Dre’s former partner. She married him while he was in prison, but when she filed for divorce she learned the marriage was not valid because he was still legally married to Sharitha. He also has two sons with reality TV personality Stormey Ramdhan. His last known partner, Toi-Lin Kelly, was his fiancée when he was arrested in 2015. She was sentenced to three years in jail on February 2, 2018, for breaking the terms of a plea deal tied to his case. The full story is in our guide to Suge Knight’s relationships and marriages.
Children
Suge Knight has eight children: Taj, Arion, Suge Jacob, Sosa, Bailei, Andrew, Posh and Legend, born between 1991 and about 2010 to six known mothers. His most public child is Suge Jacob Knight, a real estate agent who appeared on VH1’s Love & Listings. Bailei is his daughter with Michel’le, whose family is covered in our piece on Michel’le’s children. Meet all eight in our guide to Suge Knight’s children.
Prison has kept him away from much of their lives. He met his granddaughter Sunset, Jacob’s daughter, by phone in 2021, and most of his family contact now runs through calls and visits.
Timeline
April 19, 1965: Born Marion Hugh Knight Jr. in Compton, California.
1987: Plays two games for the Los Angeles Rams as a replacement player during the NFL strike.
November 3, 1989: Marries Sharitha Lee Golden in Las Vegas and starts a music publishing company.
1991: Co-founds Death Row Records with Dr. Dre, The D.O.C. and Dick Griffey.
1992: Interscope agrees a $10 million deal; Dr. Dre’s The Chronic is released.
August 3, 1995: Mocks Sean Combs on stage at the Source Awards.
October 1995: Posts $1.4 million bail for Tupac Shakur, who signs with Death Row.
September 7, 1996: Tupac is shot in Las Vegas while riding in Knight’s car and dies six days later.
February 28, 1997: Sentenced to nine years for a probation violation.
August 6, 2001: Released early from prison.
2005: Court awards Lydia Harris a $107 million judgment against Knight and Death Row.
April 4, 2006: Files for bankruptcy with Death Row.
January 15, 2009: Death Row is sold at auction to WIDEawake for $18 million.
August 24, 2014: Shot six times at a party in West Hollywood.
January 29, 2015: Runs over Terry Carter and Cle Sloan at Tam’s Burgers in Compton; Carter dies.
September 20, 2018: Pleads no contest to voluntary manslaughter.
October 4, 2018: Sentenced to 28 years in prison.
March 2, 2020: Judge affirms the $107 million Harris judgment.
February 2022: Snoop Dogg buys the Death Row brand.
April 2025: Agrees to a $1.5 million settlement with Carter’s family.
August 2026: Tells ABC News he will not testify at the Tupac murder trial.
October 2034: First eligible for parole, at age 69.
Net Worth
Suge Knight’s net worth is below zero. On our estimate it sits at about −$95 million to −$120 million, because his court debts are far bigger than anything he owns. The main reason is the $107 million judgment won by Lydia Harris in 2005, which a Los Angeles judge affirmed against him in March 2020.
It was not always this way. At its peak, Death Row was making more than $100 million a year, and Knight lived like it. That money went into the bankruptcy that began in April 2006. At a hearing in May 2006, he testified that he had $11 in the bank, about $25,000 in jewelry and $2,000 in furniture, Pollstar reported. His Malibu home, listed for $6.2 million in 2007, sold for $4.56 million in December 2008.
The label itself brought him nothing at the end. Death Row sold for $18 million at a bankruptcy auction in 2009, and the money went toward his creditors. He has been in custody since 2015, so his only recent income is small media work such as his podcast, and in 2025 he agreed to pay Carter’s family $1.5 million.
That leaves him far behind the men he came up with. Dr. Dre, his Death Row co-founder, is worth about $500 million. Jimmy Iovine, whose Interscope distributed the label, is worth $1 billion according to Celebrity Net Worth, and the same site puts No Limit founder Master P at $200 million.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Suge Knight still in prison?
Yes. He is serving a 28-year sentence at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego for the 2015 death of Terry Carter.
When can Suge Knight get out of prison?
He becomes eligible for parole in October 2034, when he will be 69.
Why is Suge Knight in prison?
He pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter in September 2018 for running over Terry Carter with his truck outside Tam’s Burgers in Compton on January 29, 2015.
Who owns Death Row Records now?
Snoop Dogg bought the Death Row brand in February 2022. Knight lost the label in his 2006 bankruptcy, and it was sold at auction in 2009.
How many children does Suge Knight have?
He has eight children: Taj, Arion, Suge Jacob, Sosa, Bailei, Andrew, Posh and Legend.
What is Suge Knight’s net worth?
His net worth is negative, at about −$95 million to −$120 million, because the $107 million Harris judgment outweighs his assets.
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