Jada Pinkett Talks Tupac Being Her Father Figure
Jada Pinkett Smith, the 42-year-old actress and wife to actor Will Smith, is speaking about her relationship with the late rapper Tupac Shakur.
Pinkett-Smith has been vocal about her complex relationship with Tupac in the past. Although Tupac died almost 18 years ago, she is still being questioned about the context of their relationship.
During an appearance on The Arsenio Hall show, the actress spoke about the impact Tupac had on her life.
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"Pac was probably one of the first male figures that I had in my life that saw the beauty and my talent and intelligence separated from sex. That's something that a young girl gets from her father, I didn't have that," she said on the late night talk show. "Pac was the first one that it wasn't about sex it was about, 'You, you're a beautiful woman, you're talented, you're strong, I respect you and you're my girl. You're going to sit right here, I'm going to protect you'; and that was about our relationship was like."
In 2011, Pinkett-Smith's now 13-year-old daughter Willow Smith wrote a letter to the late rapper.
The then-11-year-old entertainer previously posted a letter to her Instagram account, where she gives fans some insight into her feelings about the deceased rapper that was once good friends with her mother. In the hand-written letter that begins with "Dear Tupac," the young singer revealed that she believed the rapper who was pronounced dead in 1996 is alive.
"I know you are alive someplace," Willow wrote to the man she calls her favorite rapper. "I think that my mommy really misses you."
In the letter, a younger Willow pleads with Tupac to return so that her mother could be happy.
"Can you please come back can you come back so mommy and me can be happy," she writes. "I wish you were here…I really do!"
After Willow ended her letter with "Love, Willow" she posted it on her Instagram and revealed that it was written when she was a bit younger.
Pinkett-Smith and Tupac first became close friends as teenagers who attended the Baltimore School For The Arts together. Although he was fatally shot in 1996, the rapper revealed his love for the 42-year-actress in a poem released in his 1999 book "A Rose Who Grew From Concrete."
In the book that contained some of the rapper's most intimate writings, fans were able to read a poem title, "4 Jada."
"You are the omega of my heart, The foundation for my conception of love. When I think of what a black woman should be, it's you that I first think of," the rapper wrote about Pinkett-Smith. "You will never fully understand how deeply my heart feels for you. I worry that we'll grow apart and I'll end up losing you."
