Jada Pinkett Smith revealed last week that she and the late rapper Tupac Shakur dated when they were classmates in high school, but their relationship didn't exactly work out.
“You know, it’s so funny. Now being older, I have more of an understanding of what that was between us,”
Smith told Howard Stern on his Sirius XM radio show,
according to the Daily Mail. “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,’” the wife of actor Will Smith continued. “It had to be the most disgusting kiss for us both. The only way I can put it is the higher power just did not want that.”
Smith said she also worried that they were both too zealous.
“If 'Pac and I had any kind of sexual chemistry, we might have killed each other because we were both so passionate,” Smith said. “And, you know, we loved deeply. It was hard enough with us just being friends. It was a volatile relationship.”
Smith commented on how Shakur’s attitude changed after he left jail for the first time. The couple had a large fight after his release because she did not agree with the path he was on.
“I told him that it was a destructive direction,” Smith said.
Shakur was shot to death in 1996 while in Las Vegas after a long East Coat vs. West Coast feud.
“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,” Smith said. “But, I know he knew that.”
A poem about Smith named “Jada” was included in Shakur’s 1999 collection “A Rose That Grew From Concrete,”
which was published posthumously, The Huffington Post reported.
“U R the omega of my Heart / The foundation 4 my conception of Love,” he piece reads.
Smith eventually married actor Will Smith in 1997. They have two children — 16-year-old Jaden and 14-year-old Willow.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.