Suge Knight Memoir: Death Row CEO to Share Life Story in ‘Your Pain Is My Joy’

Suge Knight, the controversial co-founder of Death Row Records, is set to release a memoir titled Your Pain Is My Joy on August 4, according to Simon & Schuster’s Gallery Books imprint.

The 352-page book promises an “unflinching” and “candid” account of Knight’s life, offering a look “inside the mind of the original rap kingpin,” as described in the book’s promotional material. Knight’s tenure at Death Row Records fundamentally reshaped the landscape of hip-hop, bringing West Coast rap to international prominence in the 1990s with artists like Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg.

Born and raised in Compton, California, Knight’s path to becoming a music industry mogul was unconventional. Before founding Death Row Records in 1991, he was a Division 1 college football player and briefly pursued a career in the NFL, as noted by Simon & Schuster.

The memoir is expected to address numerous controversies that have dogged Knight throughout his career. These include the widely circulated story of him allegedly dangling Vanilla Ice over a balcony in an attempt to secure publishing rights to “Ice Ice Baby,” and his well-documented physical altercations, notably with Sean “Diddy” Combs, founder of Bad Boy Records.

Knight similarly intends to offer his perspective on the highly publicized East Coast–West Coast hip-hop rivalry and provide his account of the events surrounding the shooting of Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas in September 1996, an incident that resulted in the rapper’s death.

Knight is currently serving a 28-year prison sentence for voluntary manslaughter. The sentence stems from a January 2015 incident in which he ran over and killed Terry Carter with his vehicle. He penned the memoir while incarcerated.