Death Row Records Photographer 
Simone Green Has the Last Laugh

Simone Green

​By Jesse Serwer

At the height of Death Row Records' notoriety, Simone Green's job was to document daily activity at the label. Naturally, then, she was able to fill a book with the details.

"The last time I'd seen bullying that went on like it did at Death Row, I was in elementary school," says Green, who chronicles her days as the famously Bloods-staffed L.A. rap label's chief photographer in her just-released memoir, Time Served (My Days and Nights on Death Row Records). "If you didn't do something the way somebody liked, they're going to go tell the teacher. Well, Suge [Knight] was the teacher. ... It was something just waiting to explode."

Simone Green

​Green, who now lives in Columbia, Md., has mostly kind words for the label's talent, particularly Snoop Dogg, whom she first knew as her mailman's McDonald's-employed son, and Tupac Shakur, who became enamored with Green's hot wings after moving onto her street in North Hollywood. And she says Knight treated her respectfully from the time of her hiring in 1992 until early 1995, when, she alleges, the imposing former defensive lineman held her down while another woman beat her, amidst a dispute between him and Green's ex-husband, Tony "T-Money" Green.

She learned camera basics as a Buffalo-raised kid, from her photographer father. But it was a fortuitous encounter with Melvin Franklin of the Temptations at Flipper's Roller Disco in West Hollywood that set her career in motion. Turns out they were second cousins, and he began hiring her to document events and introducing her to people from Motown. But her photography business was only nominally lucrative until she was hired by Death Row on the recommendation of her aforementioned ex-husband, a Death Row bandleader and the bassist on key label hits like Snoop's "Who Am I (What's My Name?)."

"Tony didn't want to pay no spousal support," Green recalls. "But he figured, 'If I get her a job, she won't bother me about no money.' "