Nearly three decades after his slaying, investigators may finally have a lead on who killed legendary rapper Tupac Shakur.

On July 17, Las Vegas police served a search warrant at an unidentified home in Henderson, Nevada, about 20 miles from the Vegas Strip, as part of what the department described as its “ongoing” investigation” into the 27-year-old murder.

Shakur was killed on Sept, 7, 1996 in a drive-by in Vegas after attending a Mike Tyson title fight at MGM Grand with Death Row Records head Marion “Suge” Knight. The men left the boxing bout in a black BMW that had stopped at a red light when a white Cadillac pulled up alongside them and unleashed a fusillade of bullets at the two hip hop influencers.

Shakur was hit multiple times. The 25-year-old died from his injuries six days later. Knight was also hit in the ambush, but survived.

The fatal drive-by came as Death Row Records was in the midst of a bicoastal rap war with rivals in New York City’s Bad Boy Records, owned by Sean “Diddy” Combs. The years-long bloody battle of words and bullets felled bodies in the hip hop world on both coasts.

Roughly six months after Shakur died, Christopher Wallace, better known as The Notorious B.I.G., was leaving a music industry party at Petersen Automotive Museum in Mid-Wilshire just after midnight on March 9, 1997, when he was attacked and killed in an eerily similar manner to the shooting death of his former friend Shakur.

Wallace’s murder remains one of L.A.’s most notorious cold cases. The LAPD did not immediately return a request for comment about the status of that investigation.

In Las Vegas, investigators were also tight-lipped about the new developments in the Shakur murder investigation. A spokesperson for the Shakur family also declined to comment, calling it a “police matter.”

But law enforcement sources tell Los Angeles that the search warrant was the latest sign that, at long last, progress is being made in solving both murders, as well as a slew of other high, and low, profile rap war slayings, as those involved may finally be quietly talking to law enforcement.

The search warrant executed in Hendersen comes a week after three men were charged in New York in yet another rap slaying cold case, the Oct. 30, 2002 killing of hip hop icon Jam Master Jay — also known as Jason Mizell —  who’d been shot in the head during a suspected drug rip off at his studio in Queens.

Two of Mizell’s accused killers, Ronald “Tinard” Washington, and Karl “Noid” Jordan, who called the iconic Run DMC D.J. a friend before they allegedly killed him, had been arrested by federal investigators in 2020, but a third man suspected in the murder, Jay Bryant, was arrested in May.

The trio appeared in a Manhattan federal court on July 11 in connection with a superseding indictment that outlined new details in the murder of one of the early founders of hip hop.

“If you’re looking at new indictments and new suspects in a cold case like Jam Master Jay and those guys are in court last week, someone got the chance to be queen for the day,” says Tommy Smith, a retired intel division detective at NYPD, referencing cop-speak for cutting a deal with the feds. “New shit just doesn’t appear. You don’t just open a folder and say, ‘Look at that!’ You get the one person who drops the dime, or better yet facing a federal beef, and they will give their mother.”

Last month, Shakur, a six-time Grammy-nominated artist who was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame by Snoop Dogg in 2017, was honored with a posthumous Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the arts. Dear Mama, a docuseries about his life, was nominated for two Emmy Awards, one for outstanding documentary, one for outstanding nonfiction writing, by the Television Academy last week.

As an actor, Shakur starred in several popular films such as John Singleton’s Poetic Justice with Janet Jackson and Ernest Dickerson’s Juice. He also played major roles in Gang Related and Above the Rim.

As for Suge Knight, he is serving time for running over two men during a promotional shoot for the N.W.A biopic Straight Outta Compton in 2015. He was captured on a surveillance camera hitting two men connected to the film, Terry Carter, who died, and Cle Sloan, who was injured.  Knight said he acted in self-defense, but pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter and is currently serving 28 years in a San Diego prison: 22 years for running over the victim and 6 years because it was Knight’s third strike under California’s three-strikes law. He is eligible for parole in October 2034.