Some of the biggest names in New York's hip hop scene will team up with the Nation of Islam on Sunday for a peace summit in homage to slain rapper Tupac Shakur.
Organizers said they hope the meeting will initiate a truce in the monumental East Coast-West Coast rap rivalry.
Rap group Tribe Called Quest and Public Enemy frontman Chuck D are slated to attend the peace summit at Harlem's Mosque No. 7, as well as hip hop pioneers Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa, model Bethann Hardison and actor Malik Yoba.
Also expected are Bad Boy Records president Sean (Puffy) Combs and his protege, rapper the Notorious B.I.G., aka Biggie Smalls both of whom have been long embroiled in the coast-to-coast feud with Shakur cited as a possible motive in Shakur's shooting death.
Minister Conrad Muhammad, who organized the summit, said the forum will give Biggie, whose real name is Christopher Wallace, a chance to "finally say his piece" about Shakur and Biggie's high-profile battle with the slain rapper's label, Death Row Records.
Representatives for Biggie and Combs said they hadn't heard whether the two would be attending. But Biggie's spokeswoman said, "That doesn't mean it's not going to happen."
Muhammad said the summit would be a "day of atonement for the self-destructive, genocidal lifestyle" that claimed Shakur.
"Our community is hurting and our children are angry," said Muhammad. "Tupac was a significant figure and his loss is a tragedy. We are coming together to help our community deal with Tupac's death and the violence that surrounded his life."
Shakur was mortally wounded Sept. 7 in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas and died six days later. No arrests have been made, and police said they have few clues.
For over a year, Shakur and Death Row Records chief Marion (Suge) Knight had been feuding with Combs and Biggie, whom Shakur accused of being responsible for the 1994 midtown robbery in which Shakur was shot four times and robbed of $40,000 in jewelry.
Biggie has denied involvement and no arrests were made in the incident. But Shakur launched a national public campaign to ridicule the Brooklyn-born rapper, going so far as to publicly claim he slept with Biggie's wife.
Earlier this year, Combs was said to have sent Mustafa Farrakhan, son of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, to Knight's offices to broker a truce. But, according to published reports, Knight refused.
Combs, reportedly in fear of his life, then hired bodyguards from the Nation of Islam security force.
Malik Yoba, who stars in the Fox-TV show "New York Undercover," said the event is more than a homage to Tupac.
"There are many more Tupacs that lose their lives every day and we have to do something about it," said Yoba, a long-time Harlem youth activist. "To me, it's not enough to sit back and say there's a problem."
