Rashida Jones Recalls Having Beef With 2Pac Over His Quincy Jones Comments
Rashida Jones had beef with 2Pac back in the 1990s, and it was all over comments he made regarding her father, Quincy Jones. In an interview with The New Yorker, Jones opened up about her brief feud with the late Hip-Hop icon over remarks he made to The Source in an infamous 1993 conversation regarding her father’s attraction to white women. “All he does is stick his d*ck in white bi**hes and make f**ked up kids,” Pac said about the legendary music producer at the time.
The Parks & Rec actress took his remarks personally and fired back at the West Coast emcee with a scathing letter. A “furious” Rashida penned and submitted her note criticizing Pac for his disdain for her father. The entertainer’s missive asserted that if it wasn’t for Quincy Jones, Pac and other Black artists like him wouldn’t have a platform or forum to speak their minds. Jones called out Shakur’s “ignorance and lack of respect for his people,” claiming that his art and image were “destroying his race.”
“Yeah, I was so mad. It was a new perspective to me. I kind of understand the nuance more now that I’m older,” she told The New Yorker, regarding Pac’s comments. “It just felt like a completely unwarranted attack. 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.”
However, things would change eventually, as Rashida and Pac managed to form a new friendship through his relationship with her sister, Kidada. Jones explained how he initially ran into Kidada, thinking that her older sibling was actually her, as he approached to apologize to her for what he said.
“And then my sister was out somewhere in New York, and Tupac came up to apologize to her, because he thought it was me,” she added. “It resolved itself really nicely, because when I met him, he immediately apologized to me, immediately apologized to my dad. We sat down and had a really good conversation about it, and then he was family.”
As the conversation continued, the 48-year-old woman stated that Pac’s change of heart spoke volumes “about who he was.” She recalled how the brief feud with the “California Love” rapper taught her a lesson on humility and correcting her “self-righteous” behavior throughout her life. “I really have worked hard to stop looking at things in a binary way. We’re so flawed and so complicated,” she said.
Interestingly, Quincy Jones shared a similar positive story about Pac in a 2012 interview with The New York Times. He recalled Pac bashing him for dating and having babies with white women and the moment that Rashida “tore him apart” in her response letter. The Thriller producer remembered how he initiated a cordial relationship with the Outlawz artist before he passed.
“I remember one night I was dropping Rashida at Jerry’s delicatessen, and Tupac was talking to Kidada because he was falling in love with her then. Like an idiot, I went over to him, put two arms on his shoulders and said, ‘Pac, we gotta sit down and talk, man.'”
“If he had had a gun, I would’ve been done. But we talked,” Jones said. “He apologized. We became very close after that. Once, I was having a date at the Hotel Bel-Air, and he came by and told the waiter that he would be back, he was going home to put on a tie.”
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