Tupac and Jada’s friendship was born in Baltimore and grew from their love of acting and similar family backgrounds. It lasted the rest of Tupac’s life, through their teen years, his incarceration, and their growing fame. Tupac once said of her, “Jada’s my heart. She will be my friend my whole life. We’ll be old together. Jada can ask me to do anything and she can have it. She can have my heart, my liver, my lungs, my kidney, my blood marrow, all of that.
Pac was definitely an activist. He put the information in the music. He had the mentality that we as young black people needed to be a community. He was very motivating, very proactive. Pac was the first one who really explained the Black Panther Party to me. My family taught me about the whole Martin Luther King movement, and the Civil Rights Movement, but when Pac came into the picture, he schooled me about Malcolm X and the Black Panther Party. He didn’t just talk it – he lived it. He was a seeker of truth.
In 2007, the Will and Jada Smith Foundation donated one million dollars to the Baltimore School for the Arts to help pay for a new state-of-the-art theater. She dedicated the donation to Tupac.
- Jada Pinkett Smith
Talib Kweli, who just released his sixth album, is a socially conscious artist who is known for the purpose and depth in his music.
On his albums, all his rhetoric, as angry and as fiery as it may be, is really a means to an end. It’s really him reaching out to those dudes and those people that society has forgotten. And Tupac realized that if he spoke their language he had a shot at reaching them. Tupac’s music was like listening to a hip-hop version of “48 Laws of Power/” Because it was really about a total power, by any means necessary and using a language and using things that are negative to try to create a more positive outlook.
Now you have a whole generation of artists who take that template and use. It. Tupac became the perfect model for being the perfect rapper.
- Talib Kweli
The world lost a leader when Tupac died. We don’t know what he would’ve gone on to. If Oprah Winfrey had only lived until she was twenty-five, we would have lost a relatively unknown, local market TV anchorwoman. If Malcolm X died at twenty-five, we would have lost a hustler named Detroit Red.
- Quincy Jones
Tupac Remembered, Copyright © 2008 by Amaru Entertainment, Inc.
