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On what would have been Tupac Shakur’s 50th birthday, Jada Pinkett Smith paid tribute to her late friend by sharing a never-before-seen poem composed by the rapper.
On Tuesday, the co-host of “Red Table Talk” shared a video on Instagram with a touching caption.
“Tupac Amaru Shakur would have been 50 midnight tonight!” she wrote. “As we prepare to celebrate his legacy … let’s remember him for that which we loved most … his way with words. Here are a few you may have never heard before.”
She continued in the video by saying that “Pac” wrote her “many letters and numerous poems,” but the one she released had never been “published honestly.” She believes Shakur penned the poem while incarcerated at New York City’s Rikers Island.
In the video, Pinkett Smith reads the poem “Lost Soulz” :
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.
The poem is signed, “Yours, Tupac.”
Pinkett Smith and Shakur met in Maryland in the 1980s as students at the Baltimore School of Arts. The actor has openly and frankly talked about her friendship with Shakur since his death in 1996.
“It was the first day and he came over to me and introduced himself,” Pinkett Smith recalled in an 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. 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.”
