Will Smith has revealed that he once felt a “raging jealousy” towards the late rapper Tupac. In his new autobiography, Will, which was released on Tuesday, November 9, he discussed how his wife Jada Pinkett Smith was close friends with the rapper after meeting him at art school in the ’80s.
Smith admitted that he felt threatened by Pinkett’s friendship with Tupac and that his “mind was tortured by their connection”.
“Though they were never intimate, their love for each other is legendary – they defined ‘ride or die,'” Smith writes. “In the beginning of our relationship, my mind was tortured by their connection. He was PAC! and I was me.”
He continues: “Pac was like Harry (Smith’s younger brother) – he triggered the perception of myself as a coward. I hated that I wasn’t what he was in the world, and I suffered a raging jealousy: I wanted Jada to look at me like that.”
Smith also explained that he felt a “twisted kind of victory” on occasions when Pinkett spent more time with him than Pac. He also discussed how Pinkett’s friendship stopped him and the late rapper from forming a relationship of their own.
“If she chose me over Tupac, there was no way I could be a coward,” he says. “I have rarely felt more validated… I was in a room with Tupac on multiple occasions, but I never spoke to him. The way Jada loved Pac rendered me incapable of being friends with him. I was too immature.”
Of Tupac, Smith said that he had a “fearless passion that was intoxicating, a militant morality, and a willingness to fight and die for what he believed was right.”
Smith has spoken about Pinkett and Pac’s relationship before. During an appearance on The Breakfast Club in January 2020, he also discussed the pair’s friendship. “(Me and Pac) had a little bit of a thing because (Pac and Jada) grew up together, and they loved each other, but they never had a sexual relationship,” he revealed. “But, they had come into that age where now that was a possibility, and then Jada was with me.”
He appended, “‘Pac had a little thing on that, but she just loved him. Like, he was the image of perfection, but she was with The Fresh Prince.” In other news, Smith has admitted that his heart was “shattered” when his son Jaden asked him to be emancipated when he was just 15-years-old.
Listen to ‘Hit ‘Em Up (Dirty)’ below.
