Once back in the fold, Tupac began working on a follow-up. Inspired by his readings of The Prince (and, perhaps, by watching Iovine and Morris work), he rebranded himself as Makaveli, the power-crazed mastermind of rap. The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory was recorded in a span of a few days in August, and slated for release for the holiday season that year. On September 7, Tupac traveled with Suge and the rest of his entourage to Las Vegas to attend a Mike Tyson comeback fight. After Tyson scored a first-round knockout, Tupac started throwing punches of his own, provoking a brawl by attacking one of Suge’s longtime rivals in the lobby of the MGM Grand. After the scene cleared, Tupac left in a caravan with his entourage, riding shotgun in Suge’s SUV. At 11:15 p.m., the two pulled up to a traffic light on the Vegas strip, and a four-door white Cadillac pulled alongside. Gunshots rang out from the adjacent car, and Tupac was hit four times, once in the chest. Suge, driving, was grazed in the head by shrapnel. The two were rushed to a nearby hospital, and Tupac was placed into a coma. Six days later he was pronounced dead.

In the wake of Tupac’s murder, Death Row disintegrated. Suge Knight returned to prison, having violated the conditions of his probation by engaging in the MGM brawl. Dr. Dre had already abandoned the label after feuding with Shakur earlier in the year. Snoop and the other members of the Dogg Pound soon defected as well. Iovine scrambled to keep them all, but managed to retain only Dre, by investing in his new label, Aftermath.

Tupac’s death was a pointless tragedy, to be sure, but it was also an excellent career move. Sales of his back catalog spiked, and when The 7 Day Theory debuted in November it immediately claimed the number one spot. Pac would go on to release six more posthumous albums, selling far more in death for Interscope than he had in life. While at the time commentators wondered if Tupac’s death might signal the end of the gangsta rap genre, Morris and Iovine had access to insider sales projections, and they could see that the fun was just beginning.

In an attempt, perhaps, to exorcise the ghosts, Morris changed the name of MCA to Universal Music Group. On the strength of Tupac’s back-catalog sales, the rebranded UMG crawled its way out of the cellar in 1996, coming in fifth in Morris’ first full year of management. The next two years at Universal were even better. No Doubt’s girl power anthems were the soundtrack for a generation of impressionable ’90s kids; Marilyn Manson was the messiah of the mallgoth; and, while historians of music might never forgive Interscope for signing Limp Bizkit, they would at least note that the band ended up selling forty million records—more than Hootie, even.

In the late 1990s, on the strength of the CD boom, the recording industry enjoyed the most profitable years in its history. The economy was overflowing, aggregate demand was strong, and Americans were spending more money on recorded music than ever before. Profit margins were expanding as well, as efficiency gains in compact disc manufacturing brought the per-unit cost of goods below a dollar—a savings that was not passed on to the consumer, who was charged $16.98 retail. Consolidation in the radio industry also helped, creating a homogenous nationwide listening environment that could propel an album to platinum status almost instantly on the basis of a single hit. Controlling the airwaves was critical—if Limp Bizkit could go forty times platinum, then literally anyone could.

Meanwhile, the controversy over Interscope began to die down. Gangsta rap was here to stay, probably for decades, and anyhow Bill Bennett had his hands full with something called the Project for the New American Century. Having exhausted himself in his crusade to protect America’s children from hearing the N-word, Bennett would henceforth devote his energy into cheerleading for an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign foreign state. Premised on absurd lies, that invasion would later leave a hundred thousand corpses and a failed, Hobbesian state in its brutal and unnecessary wake. Rap music was safe; the Moral Conscience of a Generation had moved on.

Morris began to look for new talent. As much as he loved Iovine, he couldn’t rely on him entirely. He had to develop Universal Music’s presence outside of the Interscope imprint as well. To that end, he dispatched his A&R men across the country in search of new and unsigned acts. Following his own experience, he instructed his scouts to research local markets carefully and to stay on the lookout for regionally trending hits. Something interesting soon came back up the pipe: a New Orleans rap conglomerate by the name of Cash Money Records. An independent label, Cash Money had signed dozens of local rappers who, in certain record stores in the South, were managing to outsell even Universal’s best-established acts. Sensing opportunity beyond the parishes of Louisiana, Cash Money was now shopping for a pressing deal with a major. As a demonstration of its marketability, the label was distributing an advance pressing of a song called “Back That Azz Up” by an obscure rapper named Juvenile.

When Morris listened to a song for the first time, he entered a trancelike state of total concentration. He stopped talking and his face grew stern. His eyes closed halfway and he looked blankly into the middle distance. The old songwriter in him awakened, and his body began to move in time with the rhythm. He tapped his feet; he shook his arms; he bobbed his head in a circle. He continued this way, in tight-lipped silence, until the song was over, then rendered his verdict.

By his own admission, Morris had difficulty identifying which rap songs were going to be popular. He was more of a rock guy, and he relied on label heads to tell him which rappers were most likely to succeed. But “Back That Azz Up” was different. From the first time he heard it, Morris was certain it would be a massive hit. Years later, he would still quote the song’s distinctive hook from memory—“You’s a fine motherfucker, won’t you back that ass up”—then throw back his head and guffaw with delight.

Cash Money Records was owned by two brothers, Bryan and Ronald Williams, better known as Birdman and Slim. Veterans of the blighted Third Ward of New Orleans, the two had followed Suge Knight’s career closely in the press and wanted something similar for themselves. In early 1998 they flew to New York and met Morris in Universal’s offices to hammer out a deal. It wasn’t easy. Birdman and Slim weren’t just selling Juvenile, but an entire roster of rappers: Big Tymers, Hot Boys, Mannie Fresh, B.G., Young Turk, and a fifteen-year-old tagalong named Lil Wayne. In return they were demanding an 80/20 revenue split and full control of their own masters. But the biggest barrier to striking a bargain proved to be the brothers’ thick New Orleans accents—most of the time Morris could barely understand what the two were saying. Still, he closed the deal, and Birdman and Slim walked out of Universal’s offices holding a three-million-dollar check.

It was the kind of signing that set Morris apart. There weren’t too many label executives interested in spending that kind of money for a minority stake in a roster of untested, sometimes unintelligible rappers who had until recently recorded their albums in Mannie Fresh’s kitchen. But years of scouting the order-taker had taught Morris there was actually no such thing as a regional hit. There was only a global hit, waiting to be marketed. He put the considerable weight of Universal’s promotional team behind the label, and within a few months “Back That Azz Up” was playing in Ibiza.

The rebranded Universal Music Group was a success. Seagram, though, was floundering. Beverage sales were flat and the movie studio was a dud factory. First there had been Waterworld. Then had come Meet Joe Black. Then there was Dante’s Peak, Mercury Rising, and Blues Brothers 2000, followed by McHale’s Navy, Flipper, and That Old Feeling. Since Bronfman had taken over, each year at Universal Studios had been worse than the last. The worst was 1998, one of the losingest years for a major Hollywood studio in living memory.