East Coast, West Coast Rappers Call For A Truce

LOS ANGELES - Rap star Snoop Doggy Dogg of Long Beach and rap mogul Sean "Puffy" Combs of New York came together yesterday to call for an end to an East Coast-West Coast rivalry that has cast a shadow over hip-hop music for two years.

"The media need to let it go and the fans need to let it go," Combs said during a news conference before the taping of an episode of "The Steve Harvey Show," a sitcom that airs on the WB Network.

"All the kids around the world are watching," said Snoop. "They look up to us and they want something positive to look forward to and something to live for. By calling for a truce we're giving them something to live for."

Combs' Bad Boy Entertainment, whose roster includes rap star the Notorious B.I.G., has traded public insults and threats with Death Row Records since one of Death Row's star artists, the late rapper Tupac Shakur, implicated Combs, B.I.G. and others in a New York ambush in which Shakur was shot by unknown assailants in 1994.

But yesterday, Combs dismissed the name-calling and the threats as so much hype.

Combs and Notorious B.I.G. have denied that they had any connection to either shooting involving Shakur, but the feud between them and Shakur and Knight escalated after the ambush in 1994.