When he was gunned down in Las Vegas, the rap star Tupac Shakur was under contract to Death Row Records, the West Coast juggernaut that pioneered gangster rap, a wildly successful music made up of misogyny, hypermaterialism and open celebration of murder. If this sounds like a description of the ''Godfather'' trilogy, that's because it is; gangster rappers view the Corleone saga with biblical reverence. They have outstripped Mario Puzo by bringing their own legends to life -- recreating the street wars in song, music videos and especially in the way they live.

Death Row was founded a scant five years ago. Nurtured by the entertainment giant Time Warner, the company has earned more than $100 million, primarily on gangster rap. Attacked by virtuecrats like C. DeLores Tucker and William Bennett, Time Warner sold its stake in Death Row's distributor, Interscope. The rappers insist they are merely telling it like it is and ''reporting'' the news from the ghetto streets. Maybe so. But they were also making a billion-dollar industry into an apparatus for a gang war. The transformation is unprecedented in pop culture; historians will be writing about it for a long time to come.

As has been widely reported, Death Row's chief executive, Marion (Suge) Knight, cultivates the gangster image, flaunting the symbols and colors of a Los Angeles street gang. Some of Death Row's biggest stars have been implicated in high-profile crimes and have either done time or narrowly escaped it. The platinum-selling Snoop Doggy Dogg was recently acquitted of murder in connection with a shooting. Mr. Shakur had gone to jail twice -- once for assault, once for sexual assault -- and had been implicated in at least three shootings. Death Row's co-founder, the rap star Dr. Dre, recently left the company, citing negative publicity. His remarks were directed at Mr. Knight, who seems to sow death and destruction everywhere he goes.

Mr. Knight is the architect of a feud between Death Row in the West and its East Coast rival, Bad Boy Entertainment. The hostilities have been chronicled in trade journals for more than a year and have involved threats, guns and both songs and videos in which rappers insult rivals and depict them coming to harm. Stars who once lived carefree lives now travel with fleets of bodyguards. It is unclear why Mr. Shakur was sprayed with bullets in Las Vegas. But he was the second Death Row insider to be murdered in the last year. The other was Jake Robles, a close friend of Mr. Knight. Mr. Knight was present at both shootings.