BBC News Online: Entertainment: Music

Hip-hop boss leaves jail early

Knight, the co-founder of the rap music label Death Row Records, was released on Friday from Mule Creek State Prison near Sacramento, five days earlier than expected.

"I had everything. I still do," he told the station.

"But I had everything I could possibly have and I had six of the best lawyers and I still got nine years."

Halfway house

Despite his imprisonment his record label continues to flourish. A recently-released album by the late rapper Tupac Shakur has been top of Billboard's R&B/Hip-Hop chart for three weeks.

He has been taken to a federal halfway house or work-release facility where he will spend the next two months before being fully released.

He was jailed in October 1996 following his involvement in a fight with a rival gang just hours before Tupac Shakur, who was signed to Death Row, was killed in a Las Vegas drive-by shooting.

Knight was driving Shakur's car at the time and was shot in the head. He was also on probation for assaulting two musicians in 1994.

He turned Death Row into one of the major forces in American music in the 1990s, but often became involved in hip-hop's gangland disputes.