Why 2Pac once dissed the Quincy Jones and called his kids “F*cked up”
2Pac was a fiery character and had issues with many people during the height of his career in the mid-’90s. From MC Hammer to Wendy Williams and Q-Tip, the West Coast icon could be vicious with his words, and he most definitely didn’t hold back when he aimed at Quincy Jones.
The All Eyez On Me creator didn’t just aim at the producer of Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ but also decided to verbally attack his children, which infuriated the musician’s kids, including Rashida Jones.
During a discussion about her teenage years, Rashida revisited her feud with 2Pac and explained how she was 17 when the lyricist made derogatory remarks about her father in a 1993 interview he had with The Source magazine.
While speaking with the iconic hip-hop publication that was in heavy circulation during the ’90s, 2Pac touched on Jones’ sex life and criticised his interracial relationship, declaring, “All he does is stick his dick in white bitches and make fucked up kids!” This, of course, provoked a reaction from the family.
That said, Rashida Jones decided to pen an open letter to address the emcee’s claims directly. In her letter, Rashida called out 2Pac’s “ignorance and lack of respect for his people,” also accusing him of “destroying his race.”
In the letter, she continued to speak to 2Pac directly. She stressed the importance of her father in black culture, writing, “Tupac, if you learn one lesson, let it be that at least my father took the time to look at how fucked up life would be if he didn’t get his shit together early on. Where the hell would you be if Black people like him hadn’t paved the way for you to even have the opportunity to express yourself?”
2Pac’s mother was a militant Black Panther, so, understandably, he may have had some unsavoury views about interracial relationships in the 1990s. However, in an interview with The New Yorker, she reflected on why she was so full of rage, explaining, “Yeah, I was so mad. It was a new perspective to me. I kind of understand the nuance more now that I’m older. It just felt like a completely unwarranted attack.”
She continued, “My dad doesn’t work for the government. He’s a music producer. How he chooses to live his life and who he loves is just his own business, and I’ve always felt that way.”
However, like when 2Pac dissed MC Hammer, it wasn’t long before the ‘Dear Mama’ rapper reached out, mended things and became good friends with the Jones. In fact, during her conversation with The New Yorker, Rashida unveiled that 2Pac approached her sister Kidada Jones in Manhattan and said sorry, unveiling, “Tupac came up to apologise to her. It resolved itself really nicely, because when I met him, he immediately apologised to me, immediately apologised to my dad.”
She concluded, “We sat down and had a really good conversation about it, and then he was family. It speaks so much to who he was. That was an early lesson for me, because I have been self-righteous in my life, and I really have worked hard to stop looking at things in a binary way. We’re so flawed and so complicated.”