Benzino Reflects on 2Pac Recording Session, Says His and The Notorious B.I.G.'s Deaths 'Took the Wind Out' of Hip-Hop

Benzino has no shortage of things to say when it comes to 2Pac.

In a conversation with TMZ, Benzino recalled recording his song “Killa” with 2Pac and Freddy Fox at Quad Studios—the same Manhattan studio where Tupac Shakur was shot five times in 1994.

“I knew 2Pac personally,” Benzino told the outlet, adding that recording with Pac and Fox was “exciting” and “a hell of an experience. I wasn’t really expecting that.”

Benzino also lamented 2Pac and The Notorious B.I.G.’s passing. “We lost two giants with [2Pac] and Biggie in this industry,” he said. “That was the night that hip-hop really—I don’t wanna say died but it took a lot of the wind out of hip-hop when we lost 2Pac and Biggie.”

Benzino also spoke on 2Pac and the Live Squad rapper Stretch’s friendship, saying he doesn’t know how they met. Benzino described Stretch as having a “big personality” and said that 2Pac was “drawn” to those kinds of people—what Benzino further characterized as “big street guys with big personalities.”

“Stretch ran with [2Pac], real loyal. I think he got caught up in the whole 2Pac situation himself," he explained. "Unfortunately, he was killed also.”

Following the Quad Studios shooting, Makaveli insinuated that Stretch helped set him up. Then, exactly a year after the shooting, in 1995, Stretch was murdered execution-style—and Pac appeared to reference Stretch’s death on The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory album cut “Against All Odds.” Pac rapped, "And that ni**a that was down for me, rest the dead/Switched sides, guess his new friends wanted him dead.”

The 7 Day Theory was 2Pac’s first posthumous release, arriving on Nov. 5, 1996, almost two months after he died.