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Actor Rashida Jones has reflected on her historic battle with late rapper Tupac Shakur, after the artist called out her father Quincy Jones for sleeping with and having children with white women.
The “Changes” musician made the statement about the music producer in an interview with The Source in 1993, prompting Rashida to pen a heated letter in response.
Rashida, daughter of Twin Peaks actor Peggy Lipton, called out the rapper for his “stupidity” and “ignorance”, saying he was “self-absorbed and indulgent” in the piece, also published in The Source.
“Where the hell would you be if Black people like him hadn’t paved the way for for you to even have the opportunity to express yourself?” she wrote at the time.
However, Rashida has since said that the rapper became family, after they confronted each other and aired out their differences.
“I kind of understand the nuance more now that I’m older. It just felt like a completely unwarranted attack,” she told the New Yorker.
“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.”
Although she admitted she was “furious” and “so mad” at the rapper, she admitted that he offered a “new perspective” to her.
The rapper approached her older sister Kidada to apologise for the comments after the letter was published, as he had thought she was Rashida. The interaction eventually led to a romance, which in turn led to Kidada calling him the “love of my life”.
“It resolved itself really nicely, because when I met him, he immediately apologised to me, immediately apologised to my dad,” Rashida continued. “We sat down and had a really good conversation about it, and then he was family.”
Shakur’s reaction and apology inspired Rashida throughout her life as she said that action spoke “so much to he was”.
“I have been self-righteous in my life, and I really have worked hard to stop looking at things in a binary way,” she said. “We’re so flawed and complicated.”
Shakur died at the age of 25, in 1996, after he was murdered in what appeared to be a targeted shooting.
Duane “Keffe D” Davis, a former Los Angeles-area gang leader has since been charged for the killing and will now face trial in November 2024 after switching attorneys.
Davis was arrested outside Las Vegas last year after he wrote a book detailing the night Shakur was murdered. He noted in the book that while his nephew allegedly fired the fatal shots, he was allegedly in the car and claims to have provided the murder weapon.
