American record producer and rapper, Marion “Suge” Knight has been sentenced to 28 years in prison for killing a businessman in a hit-and-run after a fight in Los Angeles.

Knight was charged with murder, attempted murder and hit-and-run following the January 2015 altercation.

The co-founder of the influential Death Row Records pleaded no contest to a voluntary manslaughter charge in a plea agreement with prosecutors ahead of his approaching murder trial.

Knight and Cle “Bone” Sloan, a consultant on the NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton was involved in a fistfight outside a burger shop that ended with Knight clipping Sloan with his pickup truck.

According to Independent, Knight ran over another businessman, Terry Carter, who died from his injuries, before speeding away from the scene.

His lawyers argued he was acting in self-defence.

READ ALSO: GUN BATTLE! One dead, others injured as police and suspected cultist clash in Lagos

The former record producer will be formally sentenced October 4, when he will be given a 28-year jail term under the agreement with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.

The deal, in which Knight admitted using a “deadly and dangerous weapon” when he ran down two men with his vehicle, calls for him to serve 22 years in prison for voluntary manslaughter with a further six years because of the US “three-strikes” law relating to repeated violations.

Had Knight been found guilty of murder as originally charged, he would have faced life in prison, prosecutors said.

Knight is best known as the co-founder and former CEO of Death Row Records. Death Row Records rose to dominate the rap charts after Dr. Dre’s breakthrough album The Chronic in 1992.

After several years of chart successes for artists including Tupac Shakur, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Outlawz and Tha Dogg Pound, Death Row Records stagnated after Knight’s incarceration on probation violation charges in September 1996 and went bankrupt in 2006.

In February 2015, Knight was charged with murder and attempted murder following a fatal hit-and-run in Compton, California. He pleaded not guilty to all charges.