Rapper Drake appears to have purchased the gold, diamond and ruby ring designed and worn by hip-hop legend Tupac Shakur just days before he was shot dead.
The ring in question sold for a record $1million at auction in New York, well above Sotheby’s pre-sale estimate of between £200,000 and $300,000, making it the most valuable hip-hop artefact ever sold, the auction house said.
Shakur wore the ring during his final public appearance at the MTV Video Music Awards on September 4, 1996 – nine days before the 25-year-old was shot dead by an unidentified assailant in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas.
The buyer’s identity however remained a mystery – that is until Drake published an image on Instagram today in which he is seen holding what appears to be the famous item.
The ring was seen shining in an Instagram Story shared by the rapper amid the promotion of his Drake took to his Instagram Story to promote his new song with Travis Scott, ‘Meltdown,’ from the newly released Utopia album.
The auction of the ring came as cops investigating Shakur’s murder said they will now conduct forensic tests on several .40 caliber bullets found at former Crips gang member Keefe D’s home during a raid last week.
The Nevada home is owned by Duane Davis’s – also known as Keefe D – wife Paula Clemons and was raided on Monday last week as part of an investigation into Shakur’s murder.
In 2018, while filming the 10-part Netflix docuseries ‘Unsolved, the Tupac and Biggie Murders’, Keefe D claimed it was his own nephew Orlando ‘Baby Lane’ Anderson who pulled the trigger and said he was in the car with him at the time.
It comes as Shakur’s 14-Karat gold crown ring, which is encrusted with diamonds and rubies, was sold in New York yesterday.
Shakur, whose hits included ‘California Love,’ designed the ring over the course of a few months following his time behind bars before it was assembled by jewelers in New York City, Sotheby’s said.
His godmother Yaasmyn Fula offered the ring for the auction. When designing the ring, Shakur had been influenced by 16th century Italian philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli’s political manifesto ‘The Prince’ which he read while in prison on sex abuse charges.
He modeled the design on the crowns of the medieval kings of Europe, Sotheby’s added.
The ring is engraved ‘Pac & Dada 1996,’ a reference to his girlfriend Kidada Jones.
The sale was part of a dedicated hip-hop auction to mark 50 years of the genre which falls in August this year.
Shakur is considered one of the greatest rappers of all time, selling 75 million records. He was a central figure in the Los Angeles-based West Coast hip-hop scene, which feuded with rival East Coast rappers in New York.
His killers have never been caught and theories about who was responsible have long abounded.
