Rashida Jones Reflects on Her 1993 Argument with Tupac Shakur and How It 'Resolved Itself Really Nicely'

The actress wrote an open letter slamming the late rapper after he made disparaging comments about her father Quincy Jones

Rashida Jones is reflecting on an argument she had with the late rapper Tupac Shakur — and how it eventually resolved itself before his untimely death.

Rashida, 48, famously wrote a heated letter to the hip-hop magazine The Source in 1993 after Shakur took a crude dig at her Black father, the legendary music producer Quincy Jones, in its pages for having children with white women.

The Parks and Recreation actress (whose mother, actress Peggy Lipton, was white) was 17 at the time, and wrote that the rapper’s comments represented “ignorance and lack of respect for his people.”

In a new interview with The New Yorker, the star said she was “furious” and “so mad” at Shakur, and that his take was a “new perspective” to her.

“I kind of understand the nuance more now that I’m older. It just felt like a completely unwarranted attack,” she said. “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.”

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Regardless, Rashida eventually found forgiveness when Shakur approached her older sister Kidada to apologize, thinking she was Rashida, and the two began a romance.

“It resolved itself really nicely, because when I met him, he immediately apologized to me, immediately apologized to my dad,” she said. “We sat down and had a really good conversation about it, and then he was family.”

Rashida said the apologies from Shakur — who died in 1996 at age 25 — spoke “so much to who he was,” and ultimately became a lifelong lesson for her.

“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.”

In the 2001 book The Autobiography of Quincy Jones, Kidada, 50, opened up about her romance with the late rapper, and called him “the love of my life.”

She wrote that his comments to The Source “made Daddy mad,” but that sparks flew when she and Shakur met at a club.

“I met Tupac at a club after that and he said, ‘I want to apologize to you. I didn’t mean that about your dad or you. I didn’t see you as real human beings. Now that I see you…’ He was all game,” she wrote.

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After that, Kidada said the two began dating, and recalled a moment in which they were out to dinner and dad Quincy showed up to meet him for the first time. The two sat down together and “got real for a long time,” and eventually hugged it out.

“He and I lived together for four months and then he was murdered in Las Vegas in 1996,” she wrote. “It was the most horrible thing that ever happened to me.”

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