LOS ANGELES — Rap mogul Marion "Suge" Knight might be calling it a night a little bit earlier.
On Thursday, city officials asked a judge to ban members of the notorious Mob Piru street gang from being able to congregate in a neighborhood of Compton. In doing so, they asked that the order include Knight.
Knight, the co-founder of Death Row Records, fired back, calling the injunction a "publicity stunt."
"This is crazy," he told the Los Angeles Times. "I'm a 42-year-old businessman, not a gang member. I don't even live in Compton anymore. This injunction lists people who are already in jail — and at least one guy who is long dead."
Knight, who was raised in Compton and spent five years in prison, was one of 200 people the officials said were members of Mob Piru. The injunction would ban them from congregating, carrying guns, drinking alcohol in public or staying out past 10 p.m.
While injunctions are a common anti-gang tactic in Southern California, this is the first time that one has been sought in Compton. Two years ago, Compton, located less than 10 miles from downtown Los Angeles, announced a gang crackdown. The suburb has been a popular subject detail for rappers over the years, including the 1988 N.W.A. album "Straight Outta Compton."
The members of Mob Piru have gained notoriety for their alleged links to Knight and the Death Row label, which released a string of top-selling albums in the 1990s, led by the late rapper Tupac Shakur. Knight was driving the night Shakur was shot four times in 1996 in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada. He died six days later.
Later that year, Knight went to jail for violating his probation by beating a gang rival in the lobby of the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas.
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