2Pac may have been at the top of the rap game, but according to his longtime friend Jada Pinkett Smith, he struggled with a hidden illness.
Smith has been open about living with alopecia since going public in 2018. But she recently said that she and Pac had the condition — an autoimmune disease that causes unpredictable hair loss — in common.
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“I don’t think Tupac ever talked about the alopecia he suffered from,” she told People.
The Girls Trip actress went on to talk about what she said was Pac’s hidden battle with alopecia, shedding light on the emotional turmoil he faced. She claimed the condition was triggered in 1991, when Pac was stopped for jaywalking by the Oakland Police Department and allegedly beaten. The rapper filed a $10 million civil suit over the incident, and reportedly ended up winning a $42,000 settlement.
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“After he was in Northern California with the police officers that beat him up, he started losing his hair. And his alopecia patterns were far more extreme than mine,” said Smith.
According to Smith, the late legendary lyricist, who was tragically murdered in 1996, chose to keep his alopecia under wraps.
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“I don’t think Pac ever talked about his alopecia, but he also looked really good with a bald head. But that was during a time and during an era that you wouldn’t — he just wouldn’t talk about it,'” added Smith.
Meanwhile, the actress is adamant that “if [Shakur] were alive today, he would” speak openly about his condition.
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Earlier this week, during an interview with Hoda Kotb on the TODAY show, Smith reflected on what she really thought of Will Smith‘s infamous Oscars slap — a move made in her defense after a joke was made about her alopecia.
“First of all, I’m really shocked, because mind you, I’m not there. We haven’t called each other husband and wife in a long time,” she said. “I’m like, ‘What is going on right now? “Keep my wife’s name out of your mouth?”’ I’m really worried for Will because I don’t know what’s going on.”
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She went on to clarify that the eye roll many saw before Smith marched onstage and slapped Chris Rock wasn’t her being offended by the joke he’d made. “I did that eye roll not so much for me — and I think this is really important — but the fact that there could be a jab at alopecia,” she added.
The actress’s comments were just the latest shocking revelations in the press run around the release of her memoir Worthy. She also recalled that 2Pac asked her to marry him while he was serving time in prison in 1995. Smith made the claim during an interview with former NBA stars Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson on their All the Smoke podcast.
“When I wrote about that in the book and when I had to talk about it, speak my words for the Audible version of the book, that was probably one of the more painful parts,” she said. “Seeing him there, the condition that he was in and having to leave him there. He was in bad shape. And so, when he asked me to get married, he was at Rikers [Island].
“I knew at that time that he needed somebody to do time with him, which I was gonna do anyway. He didn’t have to marry me to do that. I’m here. He needed a rock. Because of our friendship and everything we had been through together, he just wanted to feel that solidified foundation.”
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She continued: “I promise you, he would’ve married me and divorced me as soon as his ass got out [of prison]. He would’ve! […] I just think it was the mind state that he was in. He wrote me this long letter, and even before Pac went to jail, he was starting to shift in a certain manner. [In a] good [way], really good.
“And I think that for him, he just felt like, ‘Okay, if I can tether myself, it’ll keep me on a trajectory.’ But trust me, he would’ve divorced me as soon as he — one thing he wouldn’t want me as is a wife. I know that for a fact! But I think just being at Rikers, it just kinda shook him a little.”
