The fight over unreleased 2pac material

Tupac Shakur Afeni Shakur Suge Knight

The mother of late rapper Tupac Shakur is trying to stop his former record label selling unreleased recordings as part of a bankruptcy settlement.

Afeni Shakur is seeking an injunction in a bankruptcy court claiming Death Row Records is attempting to sell material that belongs to his estate.

Unreleased material should have been turned over to the estate as part of a 1997 agreement, her lawyer said. The court is expected to consider the request in the next month. At the same time, it will decide whether Death Row should be allowed to release an album with the unreleased tracks to help pay its debts, according to Ms Shakur’s lawyer Donald David.

After Tupac’s death, Death Row and the rapper’s family settled for an undisclosed sum amid allegations that the label had defrauded Shakur. But Death Row’s fortunes – and those of its owner, Marion “Suge” Knight – started to slide after the shooting in 1996.

In 2005, Suge Knight was ordered to pay $107m (£51.8m) to a woman who claimed she helped found the record label, but was forced out once Knight realised how lucrative it had become.

Knight sought bankruptcy protection in April 2006, claiming debts of more than $100m (£48.5m) for both himself and the record label. Last month, the rap mogul placed his seven-bedroom home on the market for $6.2m (£3m) as part of his financial overhaul.

Afeni Shakur was an important member of the Black Panther Party editing and writing columns for the Panther Post with cunning that it misled the FBI to believe that the Black Panther Party was defunct, while in fact it was growing. While pregnant with Tupac, she was incarcerated for withholding information that could have led to the arrest of leading members of “Panther 21″. While in prison, Afeni Shakur reportedly obtained a court order to have one boiled egg per day because the food within the jail was unfit for an expecting mother. Since her son’s death she has overseen Tupac’s unreleased material. By bringing in the best producers Tupac has sold millions of albums posthumously. Afeni has revealed this month Tupac recorded 147 songs when he was on Death Row Records.