Photo: Getty Images
Jada Pinkett Smith celebrated what would have been Tupac Shakur's 50th birthday by sharing an unpublished poem written by the late rapper.
"Tupac Amaru Shakur would have been 50 midnight tonight," she captioned an Instagram video on Tuesday (June 15) that showed the poem. "As we prepare to celebrate his legacy … let’s remember him for that which we loved most … his way with words. Here are a few you may have never heard before."
In the video, the Red Table Talk host spoke of her friendship with Pac, who died in 1996. "Pac wrote me many letters and many poems. And I don't think this has ever been published honestly," she shared.
Pac wrote the poem in blue ink on lined notebook paper. "Some say nothing gold can last forever / And 2 believe this [I] need no proof / I have witnessed all that was pure in me / And be changed by the evil men can do," the poem reads. "The innocence possessed by children / Once lived inside my soul / But surviving years with criminal peers / Has turned my warm heart to cold / I used 2 dream and fantasize / But now I'm scared 2 sleep / Petrified, not to live or die / But to awaken and still be me / It is true that nothing gold can last."
It continues, "We will all one day see death / When the purest hearts are torn apart / LOST SOULS are all that's left / Down on my knees I beg of God / To save me from this fate / Let me live to see what was gold in me / Before it is all too late."
Pac concludes the poem with his signature: "Yours, Tupac."
Photo: Getty Images
In January 2020, Jada's husband Will Smith spoke to Charlamagne tha God, Angela Yee, and DJ Envy about feeling insecure about Jada's friendship with Tupac early in their relationship.
“They grew up together and they loved each other but they never had a sexual relationship but they had come into that age where now it was a possibility and then Jada was with me,” he said. “Pac had a little thing on that but she just loved him, like he was the image of perfection, but she was with the Fresh Prince. So, I never could, we were in the room together a couple of times, I couldn’t speak to him, and he wasn’t going to speak to me if I wasn’t going to speak to him.”
Charlamagne then expressed his surprise in their lack of communication, saying, “Really? It seems like y’all would have so much in common.”
“That’s what Jada would say all the time: ‘I’m telling you, y’all are so similar, you would love him,'" Will recalled. “And I just never… that was a huge regret of mine, I couldn’t handle it.”
“I was the soft rapper from Philly and he was Pac,” he continued. “I was deeply, deeply insecure and I wasn’t man enough to handle that relationship."