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Since Tupac Shakur was fatally shot in Las Vegas on 7 September 1996, aged 25, his murder went unsolved for decades, fuelling years of speculation. Prosecutors allege the shooting was carried out in retaliation for a fight involving Orlando Anderson, the nephew of Duane "Keffe D" Davis, who was a leader of the South Side Compton Crips gang. Davis was eventually charged with orchestrating the killing and is now on trial, though he denies the allegation.

The case is unusual because much of the evidence relies on witnesses drawn from rival Los Angeles gang networks and the wider hip-hop world of the 1990s, a milieu long associated with reluctance to speak to police or testify in court. James "Mob James" McDonald, who is giving evidence, was a member of a gang aligned against Davis's group and worked as security for Suge Knight, the record executive whose label released much of Shakur's music. His account, and his willingness or reluctance to answer questions, forms part of the wider picture jurors are being asked to weigh.

The trial matters because it is one of the few times anyone has faced criminal charges over Shakur's death, a killing that has remained a significant unresolved chapter in American music history for thirty years. How witnesses with gang backgrounds behave under questioning, including whether they cooperate fully with the court, is being closely watched as a test of whether long-standing barriers of silence can be overcome in a formal legal setting.