According to Tupac Shakur’s companion, Jada Pinkett Smith, the late American rapper developed alopecia after being brutally detained in 1991 for jaywalking.
The rapper kept his illness a secret from the public up until his murder in 1996, according to Pinkett Smith, who also suffers from the autoimmune ailment that results in hair loss.
Tupac Had Alopecia Like Me
“I don’t think Pac ever talked about his alopecia, but he also looked really good with a bald head,” she told People. “But that was during a time and during an era that you wouldn’t—he just wouldn’t talk about it.”
Pinkett Smith and Shakur knew each other from a performing arts program they attended as teens. She said his alopecia set in when he was about 20.
“After he was in Northern California with the police officers that beat him up, he started losing his hair. And his alopecia patterns were far more extreme than mine,” she said.
Shakur said that he was walking in Oakland, California, when he was stopped by police who accused him of jaywalking.
“They asked for my ID and sweated me about my name because my name is ‘Tupac,’” Shakur would later say in an interview. “My final words to them was ‘fuck y’all.’ Next thing I know I was in a chokehold passing out with cuffs on, headed for jail for resisting arrest.”
Shakur sued the police department for $10 million and the case was settled for $42,000.
Pinkett Smith went public with her own alopecia in 2018 and has been trying to raise awareness of it. In 2022, a joke that Chris Rock made at the Oscars about her lack of hair prompted Will Smith to run up on stage and clock the comedian.
Pinkett Smith has been dropping lots of revelations in recent days as she promotes the upcoming release of her memoir, Worthy.
Among the bombshells by Jada Pinkett Smith: Shakur proposed to her while he was locked up on Rikers Island and she and Will Smith have been separated since 2016.
