Jada Pinkett Smith and Tupac Shakur kissed once, but it never became romantic and Will Smith expressed his jealousy over their relationship.
On February 2023, Billboard and VIBE released a list of the top 50 Greatest Rappers of All Time. In the Hip Hop rankings, Jay-Z, The Notorious B.I.G., Nas, Jay-Z, and 2Pac came in the top 5 spots respectively.
In terms of relationships, Jada Pinkett Smith and Tupac Shakur enjoyed quite a profound one. The actress and wife of Will Smith has a long and storied history with the late rapper that many fans aren’t immediately aware of. So, what exactly went down between Jada and Tupac back in the day? Keep reading to find out.
Jada Pinkett Smith and Tupac Shakur were childhood friends after they first met at the Baltimore School.
Long before either of the two were household names, Jada and Tupac were childhood friends in Baltimore, Md. Jada was born and raised in the city, and Tupac relocated there with his mother back in the 1980s. In a past interview, Jada explained how she and the rapper crossed paths at the Baltimore School of Arts.
“And in high school, Pac was a little funny looking. Definitely from looking at him, wasn’t necessarily the type of cat that I would even like, deal with,” she said at the time.
Jada continued with, “But as soon as he approached me, he was like a magnet. Once you paid attention to him, he kind of sucked you in. And we hit it off from that moment on … I don’t think either one of us thought we would have made it in the way that we did, but we knew we were gonna do something.”
Jada Pinkett Smith and Tupac Shakur once kissed to solidify their relationship.
Many fans wonder if there was every anything romantic between Jada and Tupac, which is something that she has addressed. During a chat with Howard Stern in 2015, Jada noted that she was once curious if there was anything between them too, so she asked Tupac to kiss her. When he did, she says they agreed it was “the most disgusting kiss for us both.”
Jada Pinkett Smith and Tupac Shakur’s friendship hit the rock after they both became famous.
However, as Hollywood success rolled in for them both, their relationship became strained.
“And he felt as though I had changed,” Jada told Howard during her interview. “I’d gone Hollywood. I’d gone soft. And looking back now, I totally understand where Pac was at the time. It was a mentality he started to come out of before he was murdered.”
Apparently, Tupac and Jada weren’t on good terms when he was gunned down in 1996. “It definitely taught me a lesson, which is life is too short,” she said to Howard. “Do not let disagreements stand in between you and people that you love.”
Despite years of speculation around whether or not there was more to their friendship, both Jada and Tupac confirmed several times that things between them were platonic. In 2017, Jada revealed that she and Tupac had gotten into a “hardcore” fight before his death, and weren’t speaking when he was killed.
Tupac Shakur wrote a poem about Jada Pinkett Smith.
Despite the fact that things apparently never became romantic between them, Jada and Tupac’s relationship was impactful on both of their lives. The rapper wrote poems about her that were published after his death in The Rose that Grew from Concrete. Jada’s key role in Tupac’s life was played by Kat Graham in the biopic All Eyez on Me, and per a friend of the late rapper, Jada even told Tupac to not beat up Will after the two became an item as she feared that the MC would be overly protective.
Will Smith opened up about his “Raging Jealousy” over Jada Pinkett Smith’s friendship with Tupac Shakur.
Now, in his newly released memoir, Will has weighed in on how their friendship impacted him, admitting that he felt “tortured” by the bond that Jada and Tupac shared.
“In the beginning of our relationship, my mind was tortured by their connection,” Will writes. “He was ‘PAC! and I was me … though they were never intimate, their love for each other is legendary.”
Will writes that he felt jealous of Tupac’s “fearless passion” and “militant morality,” which he would compare to his own inability to stand up to his father — with whom Will shared a turbulent relationship, due to his father’s pattern of “violent” behavior and alcohol use.
As a result, Will writes, he felt insecure and cowardly against the late rapper. What’s more, Will compares Tupac to his younger brother Harry, who would often stand up to their abusive father, noting that he felt inadequate in comparison to both.
“[Tupac] was like Harry,” he writes. “[He] triggered the perception of myself as a coward. … I hated that I wasn’t what he was in the world, and I suffered a raging jealousy: I wanted Jada to look at me like that.”
Will goes on to share that he felt an odd happiness when his and Jada’s relationship began to progress, meaning she’d spend less time with Tupac — which he called a “twisted kind of victory.”
“If she chose me over Tupac, there was no way I could be a coward,” he writes. “I have rarely felt more validated. I was in a room with Tupac on multiple occasions, but I never spoke to him. The way Jada loved ‘Pac rendered me incapable of being friends with him. I was too immature.”
This isn’t the first time Will has spoken about his feelings of insecurity over Jada and Tupac’s friendship. Just last year, the actor admitted he could “never open up” around the late rapper, in a candid interview with The Breakfast Club.
“I could never open up to interact with Pac,” Will said. “You know, because we had a little bit of a thing. You know, they grew up together and they loved each other, but they never had … a sexual relationship.”
“I was so Jealous of Pac that it kept me from ever even speaking to him,” he captioned an Instagram post from the interview.