James “Jimmy Henchman” Rosemond (pictured), a rap music mogul who for nearly twenty years denied any involvement in the near-fatal 1994 ambush of hip-hop superstar Tupac Shakur at a New York recording studio, has now been sentenced to life in prison for his 2012 conviction on cocaine trafficking charges, reports The Smoking Gun.
The 48-year-old recidivist felon was sentence on Friday at the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, N.Y., byJudge John Gleeson who told him, “Not all kingpins deserve this, but you certainly do.”
The judge also described Rosemond’s narcotics ring as “astounding in breadth, duration, and intensity,” while admonishing, “You chose this life. And this is the punishment you get.”
The Tupac incident triggered a bicoastal uprising that reared its ugly head via rap songs, videos and body bags. The end-all of the rap wars resulted in the demise of the West Coast’s Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G. on the East. But before Tupac was killed he recorded a song, “Against All Odds” in which he pointed the finger of blame at Rosemond as being the mastermind for this near-death assault at the NYC recording studio incident:
Jimmy Henchman. . .
[You] set me up, wet me up… stuck me up.
But you never shut me up.”
Rosemond, who founded Czar Entertainment and who once repped rappers The Game and Too Short, allegedly admitted involvement in Tupac’s ambush during one of nine proffer sessions with the feds last year, according to court transcripts.
Rosemond’s confession was his attempt at trying to secure a cooperation deal that might have led to a reduced prison sentence. But Rosemond laid his cards on the table about Tupac’s ambush only after a former colleague and best friend, Dexter Isaac, spilled the goods publicly on June 16, 2011 to Allhiphop.com:
“In 1994, James Rosemond hired me to rob 2Pac at the Quad Studio. He gave me $2,500, plus all the jewelry I took, except for one ring, which he wanted for himself. It was the biggest of the two diamond rings that we took. He said he wanted to put the stone in a new setting for his girlfriend at the time, Cynthia Reed. I still have as proof the chain that we took that night in the robbery.”
Rosemond will never be tried for his alleged involvement in the ambush on Tupac because the statute of limitations for the crime is seven years and the expiration date for the incident was eleven years ago.
Next month, Rosemond, who reportedly has had business dealings with Rev. Al Sharpton, Wyclef Jean and Mike Tyson, is scheduled for trial on a separate federal indictment charging him with being the mastermind behind the murder of an ex-con who assaulted his teenage son.
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