LA Times investigative reporter Chuck Philips ties rapper and impresario Puff Daddy to the nonfatal shooting of the hip-hop icon Tupac Shakur at a NY recording studio in 1994. His piece includes an elaborate web presentation.

Philips and his colleague Michael Hiltzik won a Pulitzer in 1999 for their investigations of corruption at NARAS (the group that puts on the Grammys) and payola in the radio industry.

Here’s the heart of the story:

[N]ewly discovered information, including interviews with people who were at the studio that night, lends credence to Shakur’s insistence that associates of rap impresario Sean “Diddy” Combs were behind the assault. Their alleged motives: to punish Shakur for disrespecting them and rejecting their business overtures and, not incidentally, to curry favor with Combs.

The piece also has this juicy tidbit:

A member of Shakur’s posse cooperated with the rapper’s enemies, relaying their offer of a $7,000 payment and keeping them informed of his whereabouts on the night of the assault, according to the informant and the other sources.

Reading Philips’ story will probably provoke a familiar feeling to anyone who has tried to follow this story since its lurid beginnings 14 years ago. Shakur is one of the compelling figures of his era, until you think about him for more than about ten seconds, and remember the sexual assault charges (for which he went to prison) and the assault charges (for which he went to jail), and the various shootings that occurred around him, one of which killed a kid.

Philips says Shakur’s behavior around the time was becoming “increasingly provocative.” He continues: “He brandished weapons in public. Even friends thought he was out of control.” Indeed, in the assault, Shakur pulled his own weapon—and shot himself in the groin with it.

That’s part of the story’s compelling minute-by-minute account of the attack. Philips names talent manager James Rosemond and promoter James Sabatino as the men behind it:

In the years after the mayhem at the Quad, Rosemond tried to dispel persistent rumors that he arranged the attack. He protested his innocence in Vibe magazine and appealed to Shakur, in vain, to cease his public accusations.

In 1996, Rosemond was convicted of drug and weapons offenses and sentenced to five years in prison. Released three years later, he reinvented himself as a talent manager. His turbulent past gave him street cred and helped attract a clientele of rappers to his Czar Entertainment. Two years ago, he was convicted of assaulting a radio disc jockey in Washington, D.C. He remains on probation for the offense.

Sabatino became a fixture in Combs’ circle. He went on the road with B.I.G. and joined Combs on his 1997 “No Way Out” tour, helping him stage lavish private parties and land corporate sponsorships.

During the tour, Sabatino used fake credit cards to run up tens of thousands of dollars in charges for hotel suites, limousines and helicopters for the Bad Boy entourage. He was arrested in London and extradited to the U.S. He is serving an 11½-year prison term for wire fraud and racketeering.

Who were the shooters in the 1994 attack? Philips has this to say:

The three men identified by the sources as Shakur’s assailants are all serving time in federal penitentiaries for unrelated crimes. The Times is withholding their names because they have not been charged.

In correspondence with The Times, one of the men said that Rosemond orchestrated the ambush. Another was cryptic. He wrote that the statute of limitations for the assault had expired, and he offered to produce, for an unspecified fee, the medallion stolen from Shakur.

Puffy’s real name is Sean Combs; he’s also called himself a string of things like Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, and Diddy; he’s an artist, producer and head of a business empire that sells clothes and other things. He was the producer for the Notorious B.I.G., also known as Biggie Smalls, whose real name was Christopher Wallace.

The B.I.G. camp and the Tupac camp had had a years-long blood feud going by the time of Tupac’s 1994 shooting. Tupac was shot again, and killed, two years later while driving in Las Vegas.

Smalls himself was shot and killed in similar fashion six months later, in Los Angeles.

In September 2002, Philips presented an account of the Shakur murder in Vagas. He reported that Smalls had paid the Southside Crips $1 million and provided the gun for the shooting. Philips named the murderer as well: Orlando Anderson, who was killed later in an unrelated gang incident.

Earlier: I asked Philips about the story Sunday. He replied:

My editor at the LA Times, Marc Duvoisin, came up with an idea last week for this unprecedented web experiment … We are going to drop an investigative report about the shooting of rap star Tupac Shakur exclusively online.

The cops never solved this crime. We track down the 3 assailants and some of the people who orchestrated the crime and dug up some confidential FBI reports. I reported the story and Marc Duvoisin, the best editor at the LA Times, edited it and suggested that we try publishing it directly on the web. He enlisted nearly a dozen free thinkers at the website to put together an interactive online presentation that looks hipper than anything a newspaper has ever tried.

Here’s the LAT press release:

In a web-only presentation, Pulitzer Prize-winning staff writer Chuck Philips deconstructs the 1994 ambush of Tupac Shakur at the Quad Recording Studio in New York—the first shot of a lethal, bi-coastal feud that culminated in the killings of Shakur and rap’s other leading star, Christopher Wallace, better known as The Notorious B.I.G.

Until the night he was murdered in 1996, the rap star insisted that associates of Sean “Diddy” Combs were behind the brutal ambush at the Quad. New evidence—FBI records and exclusive interviews with individuals who were at the studio that night—support his suspicions. Accompanied by a vivid photo-gallery of the cast of characters, copies of confidential documents, an interactive timeline and audio of lyrics and videos from Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., Philips pieces together a case that has left many in the music world as well as law enforcement officials baffled.

Be sure to check out the story first thing Monday morning by visiting www.latimes.com/tupac. Philips is also scheduled to conduct a live chat with readers on Tuesday.