Quad Recording Studios — where Tupac was shot (1994)

On November 30, 1994, Tupac Shakur was shot five times in the lobby of Quad Recording Studios at 723 Seventh Avenue in Midtown Manhattan while visiting a session. He was robbed of approximately ,000 in jewellery. He was shot twice in the head, twice in the groin, and once in the hand. He survived — took the elevator upstairs to the studio where the session was happening, was photographed giving the middle finger to the cameras outside — and was discharged from hospital the following day, attending his sexual assault sentencing hearing in a wheelchair.

The incident became the pivotal event in the East Coast-West Coast rap conflict that defined the mid-1990s and ultimately cost both Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G. their lives. Tupac believed — and said publicly and repeatedly, without being able to prove — that Biggie and Sean Combs had foreknowledge of the attack and did nothing to warn him. Biggie and Combs denied any involvement. The specific allegation has never been resolved, but the belief hardened into the public rivalry that shaped both artists' final years and final records.

Tupac was shot again in Las Vegas on September 7, 1996, and died six days later. Biggie was shot and killed in Los Angeles on March 9, 1997. Neither murder has been officially solved. The Quad Studios address in Midtown is now occupied by other businesses — the studio itself having long since closed — and there is nothing at the entrance to indicate what happened in the lobby one November night in 1994.