Tupac Shakur gave Madonna the write-off
IT SEEMS like a relationship between rapper Tupac Shakur and pop superstar Madonna at the height of their careers would have been fodder for the world’s tabloids. Instead, it was mostly rumour. And, as with so much of Tupac’s life, many of the details were lost with his death in 1996.
In place of a first-hand account, we’re left with an oral history pieced together by those who knew the couple. Madonna hasn’t been particularly forthcoming about the relationship, aside from confirming it and offering a few scant details in 2015.
However, a recently surfaced letter, written by Tupac to Madonna, offers a rare insight into the late rapper’s life. It appears to be a break-up letter, but it hinted at just how calculated aspects of Tupac’s character were, particularly with regard to race.
The letter was addressed simply to “M” and was dated January 15, 1995, which coincided with his time at New York’s Clinton Correctional Facility for sexual assault. It was first published last week and Rolling Stone confirmed the letter’s authenticity.
It will be up for auction with a starting bid of $100 000 at the Gotta Have Rock and Roll sale, which is scheduled for July 19 to 28. It was uncertain how the letter wound up in circulation.
In it, Tupac seemed to admit to breaking up with Madonna because she was white.
“For you to be seen with a black man wouldn’t in any way jeopardise your career, if anything it would make you seem that much more open and exciting,” Tupac wrote. “But for me, at least in my previous perception, I felt due to my ‘image’ that I would be letting down half of the people who made me what I thought I was.
“Like you said, I haven’t been the kind of friend I know I am capable of being,” he wrote, adding, “I never meant to hurt you”.
By his “image”, Tupac was probably referring to his status as an activist and social critic focusing on the perils faced by America’s black communities. His parents were both Black Panthers, and he was named after “Túpac Amaru, a South American revolutionary who led an uprising against his imperial Spanish colonisers”, according to HipHopDX.
His lyrics were often tinged with anger at the systematic oppression of black Americans. On Words of Wisdom, for example, he rapped: Emancipation Proclamation? Please/ Lincoln just said that to save the nation/These are lies that we all accepted/Say no to drugs but the governments’ kept it/And yet, they say this is the Home of The Free/But if you ask me, it’s all about hypocrisy.
In the letter, Tupac also alluded to being hurt because Madonna in an interview said “‘I’m off to rehabilitate all the rappers and basketball players’ or something to that effect”.
“Those words cut me deep… It was at this moment out of hurt and a natural instinct to strike back… that I said a lot of things.
“It no longer matters how I’m perceived,” he wrote. “Please understand my previous position as that of a young man with limited experience with an extremely famous sex symbol.”
Though the note was conciliatory – he offered “my friendship once again” – it took an ominous turn at the end.
“I felt compelled to tell you… just in case anything happened to me,” he wrote, adding, “Please be careful Madonna. Everyone is not as honourable as they seem. There are those whose hearts bleed with envy and evil. They would not hesitate to do you harm.”
Tupac was killed in a drive-by shooting the next year.
Madonna hasn’t said much about her relationship with Tupac, though she did once tell Howard Stern that he was responsible for her now infamous interview on The Late Show with David Letterman during which she used profanity, sexual innuendo and ignored several of Letterman’s questions.
“I was in a weird mood that day,” Madonna told Stern of the interview. “I was dating Tupac Shakur and he had got me all riled up about life in general… I was feeling very gangster.”