On June 16, 2021, the late rapper Tupac Amaru Shakur, also known as 2Pac, would have turned 50 years old. In honor of his birthday, actress and childhood friend Jada Pinkett Smith shared a poem he wrote.
In a caption to the video posted on her Instagram account, Smith revealed that the poem had never been shared before. “As we prepare to celebrate his legacy … let’s remember him for that which we loved most … his way with words. Here are a few you may have never heard before,” she wrote.
The poem was titled “Lost Soulz,” and Smith said this was among the many letters and poems Shakur wrote to her over the years.
She said she believed he wrote this at Rikers Island, where he was incarcerated in the mid-1990s. He was convicted of first-degree sexual abuse and served nine months of a four-and-a-half-year maximum sentence.
In 1996, Shakur was just 25 years old when he was gunned down in Las Vegas and succumbed to his injuries. The case remains unsolved to this day.
Read more poems by Shakur here.