Jada Pinkett Smith Shares Unreleased Tupac Shakur Poem Amid His 50th Birthday
Jada Pinkett Smith and Tupac Shakur had a tight-knit relationship that began when they were in high school. But, sadly, it came to an end in September 1996, when Tupac was gunned down in Las Vegas. Pinkett paid tribute to the “All About You” rapper on June 15, a day before what would have been his 50th birthday, sharing a never-before-seen poem from Tupac and a message celebrating him.
Jada Pinkett Smith unveils an unreleased Tupac poem
Pinkett Smith posted an Instagram video of the handwritten poem, one of “many” she says he wrote to her during his lifetime.
“As many of you know, today is Pac’s birthday. He would have been 50 this year. And of course, I went down memory lane. Over the years, Pac wrote me many letters and many poems, and I don’t think this one has ever been published honestly,” she said as she showed off the poem, which is titled “Lost Soulz.”
She mentioned that while he has a song called “Lost Souls,” she thinks he wrote the poem first during his imprisonment at Rikers Island in the ’90s. She added in the caption that her point in sharing the note was to “remember him for that which we loved most … his way with words.”
“I don’t think he would have minded that I share this with you guys,” she said before reading the note to viewers. It says:
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 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/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.
Tupac’s “Lost Soulz” poem
Tupac Shakur’s death was a ‘huge’ loss to her
Tupac was just 25 when he was shot and killed during a trip to Las Vegas.
Pinkett Smith was deeply affected by his death, describing it as a “huge loss in [her] life.”
“Because he was one of those people I expected to be here,” she explained in a past episode of her show, Red Table Talk. “My upset is more anger because I feel like he left me and I know that’s not true and it’s a very selfish way to think about it… I really did believe he’d be here for the long run. And when I think about it I still get really mad.”
She had been his friend since a teenager
Pinkett Smith met Tupac at a high school in Baltimore. “It was the first day and he came over to me and introduced himself,” she recalled in an old interview. “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.”
“But as soon as he approached me, he was like a magnet,” she said. “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.”
They remained close, even as he became a hugely successful rapper and she an actor. And since his death, Pinkett Smith has continued to keep his memory alive through stories and memories of the time they shared together.
