Jada Pinkett Smith Remembers Meeting Tupac While Dealing Drugs

Jada Pinkett Smith briefly discussed her drug-dealing past, which led her to meet Tupac and form a close connection based around “survival,” in an appearance on Sway in the Morning on Wednesday.

“One of the things that’s very interesting that I’ve never really said before is that when I first met Pac, I was a drug dealer,” Pinkett Smith told Sway (starting around the 17-minute mark). “As I was coming out of the life, he was going more into the life.”

She continued, “Pac and I’s relationship was about survival … I know that most people want to always connect it in this romance thing, and that’s just because they don’t have the story. It was based in survival, how we held each other down and [how] when you have somebody that has your back when you feel like you’re nothing, that’s everything.”

Pinkett Smith suggested she would be more explicit about the details of her relationship with Tupac in a forthcoming book, though she also told Sway, “It’s not for me to try to protect his legacy. Whatever Pac’s fate has been around his life, around his story, God’s got it.”

Tupac’s romantic relationships have been the subject of public scrutiny in recent months. Following the release of the rapper’s new biopic All Eyez on Me, Pinkett Smith disputed the truthfulness of multiple scenes from the film in a series of tweets. “Pac never said goodbye to me before leaving for LA,” she wrote. “I’ve never been to any of Pac’s shows by his request. We never had an argument backstage.”

A separate Tupac relationship is also in the spotlight right now: earlier this month, the auction house Gotta Have Rock and Roll announced plans to sell a letter the rapper wrote to Madonna in prison explaining the reasoning behind their break-up. This week, Madonna filed a court order to remove that item from the sale, along with a pair of underwear, an old checkbook, a hairbrush and some photos.