During a recent interview with Howard Stern, Jada Pinkett-Smith opened up about her relationship with rapper Tupac Shakur and what eventually put a rift in their friendship.
The pair met in high school at the Baltimore School for the Arts. "He was a revolutionary without a revolution if that makes any kind sense. And that kind of energy transferred to a whole other thing," she said on the SiriusXM radio show.The pair struck up a friendship -- and nothing more. "You know, it's so funny. Now being older, I have more of an understanding of what that was between us," she explained. "When you have two young people that have very strong feelings, but there was no physical chemistry between us at all, and it wasn't even just for me! It was him too. There was a time when I was like, 'Just kiss me! Let's just see how this goes.' When I tell you it had to be the most disgusting kiss for us both."
She continued, "The only way I can put it is that the higher power did not want it at all. If Pac and I had any kind of sexual chemistry, we might have killed each other because we were both so passionate. And you know, we loved deeply. It was hard enough with us just being friends. It was volatile relationship."Pinkett-Smith and Shakur both came from humble beginnings and wound up becoming successful around the same time in the 1990s. "I've had never in my life met a person like Pac. He had so much charisma. And he was poor. When I met Pac, he owned two pairs of pants and two sweaters... He used to tell me all the time. He was like, 'Jada, you're a superstar.' He didn't say it about himself."
Things between them changed when Shakur went to jail. "There was a lot of things that transpired once he went to jail. It was really when he came out. Jail was a very difficult experience for him, and of course, we were on two sides of the spectrum. Pac and I have always had very intense conversations... and we had a very hardcore disagreement," she explained.
Unfortunately, it wasn't resolved before his death 20 years ago.
"I just wasn't in agreement with the direction that he was taking, and I told him that, you know, it was a destructive direction. A very scary direction," she said. "And he felt as though I had changed. 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."
Pinkett-Smith struggled a bit after Shakur was murdered in Las Vegas. "I don't think I was guilty as much as I felt just sadness, for not having the opportunity to tell him that I loved him. But, I know he knew that. It wasn't the first time that we had had a bad argument and stopped speaking. That was a constant in our relationship," she revealed.
"It definitely taught me a lesson. Which is life is too short. Do not let disagreements stand in between you and people that you love."
Shakur often occupies the actress's thoughts. "You know, I love him. You know what? He left a very strong and powerful mark. People are still inspired by him. So he did his work," she said.
Shakur was shot four times in the Las Vegas metropolitan area of Nevada in September 1996. He died of respiratory failure and cardiac arrest
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