‘Me and My Girlfriend’: the Tupac Shakur song inspired by Nas
‘Me and My Girlfriend’ featured on Tupac Shakur’s Makaveli album released two months after his death. It sees Pac in creative form, rapping a song about his “girlfriend,” who, in actual fact, is a personification of his gun.
To write a love song about an inanimate object, and, particularly, a deadly one, is an interesting idea, but it wasn’t entirely novel. In fact, it’s claimed that Tupac directly got the idea from one of his contemporaries: his on-off friend Nas.
That’s according to Young Noble, a member of Pac’s group Outlawz who died during the summer of 2025. Young Noble appeared on several tracks on Makaveli, officially titled The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory, and he once spoke with XXL to explain where Pac got the idea for ‘Me and My Girlfriend.’
“He got that concept from Nas,” Young Noble explained. “Remember Nas did that song about the gun? Pac used to like that song.” The Nas song about the gun that he was referring to is ‘I Gave You Power,’ which is written from the point of view of a firearm.
Pac and Nas had had a bumpy relationship while Pac was alive. At its lowest point, the pair even got caught up in a feud. But they respected each other as artists, and, just days before Pac was murdered, they managed to patch things up personally.
“When him and Nas squashed their beef, I was happy,” said Young Noble. “I grew up on Nas… All the Outlawz were fans of Nas. Pac was too. He used to like Nas.”
Even though Nas and Pac had come to dislike each other at a certain stage, musically there was clearly always a degree of admiration. Hence Tupac felt compelled to write a song in the same spirit as Nas’ ‘I Gave You Power.’
“That’s all hip-hop do,” Young Noble said. “You hear a nice idea, and you flip it and make it better. That was one of those shits.”
Young Noble went on to suggest that the feud between the East and West coasts, within which Tupac was so central, was actually blown out of proportion a bit. “Pac had nothing but love from New York,” he claimed. “We was in New York for the MTV Awards two days before he got shot in Vegas. That’s where we seen Nas and they squashed it. That was one of the happiest time I’ve seen him. He was happy to be in New York and feeling the love.”
The renewed relationship between Nas and 2Pac never got the chance to establish itself, in light of Tupac’s murder. These two songs, then, ‘Me and My Girlfriend’ and ‘I Gave You Power,’ serve as a representation of their bond. They may have fought, but their art will, in some way, be forever bound.