‘Unsolved: The Murders Of Tupac And The Notorious B.I.G.’ Gives Hip Hop The ‘Law & Order’ Treatment

If you’re watching a Law & Order marathon on USA and you fall asleep for a little nap, and then wake up when Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac and The Notorious B.I.G. is on, you might think you’re still watching Law & Order with some fresh new faces. The scripted true crime limited series begins tonight at 10 pm ET, and over the course of 10 episodes, attempts to make sense out of the infuriating fact that no one has been convicted for the murders of two of the most famous hip hop stars on the planet.

While true crime drama series are all the rage right now, what Unsolved makes quite clear is that not everyone can do them well. Ryan Murphy and his American Crime Story series is the undisputed king at the moment. He’s figured out the formula to making each episode compelling and gorgeous even when the action on-screen is gruesome.

Unsolved bops around from the 2006 investigation, led by Josh Duhamel’s Detective Greg Kading (the real life Kading, also the author of Murder Rap, serves as co-executive producer on the series), to 1997’s work on the case, led by Jimmi Simpson’s Detective Russell Poole, and even explores the early to mid-90’s friendship between Biggie and Tupac, with some excellent casting choices in the form of Wavyy Jonez and Marcc Rose filling the legendary rappers’ shoes. But in the process of investigating potentially tangential crimes, chasing down dead-end leads and bickering with each other over minor details, shining a light on the corruption, involvement, and incompetence of the LAPD really only allows this series to make matters more confusing as it raises even more questions about one of music’s greatest mysteries.

The USA series is a bit more generous in exploring the lives of its victims in Tupac and Biggie (and their associates), as they’re so obviously much more interesting, rather than only focusing on the work of a bunch of police bros as other series have been known to do. Duhamel and Simpson are solid, as are their cohorts, including Wendell Pierce and Bokeem Woodbine and Jamie McShane, respectively. Each episode also highlights how frustrating it was, and is, to get any definitive answers and insight into exactly what happened those fateful nights and how we’re all just as clueless 20 years later.

Hip hop heads clamoring for a dramatized look at what went down behind the scenes at the LAPD during Biggie’s investigation or those that simply want to appreciate the good ol’ days of hip hop will find elements in this series that they can appreciate. However, it simply doesn’t stack up with fellow true crime drama series. As the show veers towards exploring race relations, which it would be ignorant to simply ignore, it becomes clear that it’s nearly impossible to handle the topic as masterfully as The People v. O.J. Simpson did back in 2016. Unsolved is a decent limited series, for sure, but ultimately proves to not be quite as fascinating as its topic at hand and also unable to present new ideas about the case, which feels like one we’ll be still be adapting into TV series for the next 20 years.

Where to watch Unsolved: The Murders Of Tupac And The Notorious B.I.G.