Malcolm Greenidge, known as E.D.I. Mean, took the stand Tuesday, August 25, 2026, as a witness in the trial of Duane Davis, and for the first time in court, the world heard what may have been the last conversation between Tupac’s childhood friend, family member, big brother, and mentor and the fallen legend himself. The moment was raw. It was real. And it finally put a face to thirty years of silence.
When the light-colored Cadillac pulled up that night at the intersection of Flamingo and Koval, Greenidge saw the shooter’s arm, but not the faces of the people in the Cadillac. But what came next—the moment he rushed to check on 2Pac—that’s what the jury needed to hear. “I’m horrified,” Greenidge testified about his reaction to the shooting. Then came the gut punch: When he reached the BMW, Shakur told him “Get on the ground, they’re going to shoot you,” and when Greenidge turned around, there was a shotgun in his face held by a police officer.
That’s the scene the culture never fully grasped until now. Not the aftermath you see in documentaries—but the actual moment. The chaos. The fear that a legend’s final act was to warn his blood about survival, not his own wounds.
Greenidge had come to Las Vegas that weekend to see the Mike Tyson vs. Bruce Seldon fight at the MGM Grand, and was in a car behind the vehicle carrying Tupac and Death Row Records CEO Marion “Suge” Knight. They were headed to Club 662. A simple night that became the night hip-hop changed forever. Greenidge rode in a Lexus with Tupac and his fiancée, though he said he didn’t actually go to the fight because he was waiting for Tupac to call but never got the call.
The backstory courts and documentaries have danced around for three decades finally clicked into place in that Las Vegas courtroom: Prosecutors say Duane Davis was the “shot-caller” who came up with the plan to exact revenge on the rapper and Knight in retaliation for an attack by Shakur and his entourage against Davis’ nephew, Orlando Anderson, earlier that night at the MGM Grand. Davis, 63, is the only person prosecuted in connection with the slaying of Shakur, who died September 13, 1996, days after the shooting.
E.D.I. Mean, born July 7, 1974, became friends with Tupac through his cousin Kastro in elementary school. He was part of the Outlawz, a group that released an album with Tupac Shakur. For E.D.I., this wasn’t courtroom theater or celebrity gossip—it was blood. It was family. And now, three decades later, he’s the keeper of the moment everyone wanted to forget but nobody could.
The trial is expected to last about six weeks. Davis faces a single count of murder with a deadly weapon with the intent to promote, further or assist a criminal gang in Shakur’s death, has pleaded not guilty, and has been jailed since late 2023. But testimony like E.D.I. Mean’s—grounded in memory, specific in detail, unshakeable in its humanity—that’s what justice actually looks like when it finally arrives.
For 30 years, the culture mourned 2Pac in abstraction: the legend, the icon, the what-could-have-been. But E.D.I. Mean brought him back as a man in his final seconds—thinking of his brother, thinking of survival, thinking of anyone but himself. That’s the moment that changes how we remember this night forever.
The 16BARS take: Three decades and one trial later, E.D.I. Mean just gave us the most real moment in Tupac’s death—not the gun, not the Cadillac, but a man’s final act of loyalty. That testimony hits different.
