Music News

Back in 1993, 2Pac sat down with The Source for an interview and the late rapper made some disparaging remarks about music legend Quincy Jones.  “All he does is stick his d—k in white b—es and make f—ed up kids,” Pac said at the time.

This infuriated a then 17-year-old Rashida Jones, so much so that she wrote an open letter to the magazine in defense of her father. In her letter she tore into Shakur’s interview, starting it off by saying, “Because I am the youngest of Quincy Jones’ six daughters, I cannot view this article or this man without bias [“War Stories” by Kim Green, Aug, ’93]. But I do think that anyone who reads this article would be shocked by his ignorance and lack of respect for his people.”

Adding, “To demean a man like Quincy Jones, a man who came from the ghetto of Chicago and through his talent and perseverance became a living music legend, demeans the whole progress of African Americans.” She then ended her letter by saying, “Where the hell would you be if Black people like him hadn’t paved the way for you to even have the opportunity to express yourself? I don’t see you fighting for you race. In my Opinion, you’re destroying it and shitting all over your people.”

The actress recalled this incident in a recent profile with The New Yorker and was asked by writer Michael Schulman how their relationship evolved after the letter and once he started dating her older sister Kidada Jones. “Furious! So precocious, so self-righteous. Yeah, I was so mad,” she answered. “It was a new perspective to me. I kind of understand the nuance more now that I’m older. It just felt like a completely unwarranted attack.”

She then added that she was interning at Warner Bros. Records when she wrote the letter. “I printed it off my word processor and put it in an envelope and sent it to The Source,” she recalled. “I was interning at Warner Bros. Records that summer, so I think I wrote it there. Maybe I had the other intern proof it for me.” The actress then said ‘Pac mistook her older sister Kidada for her in New York and apologized, saying, “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 continued by saying, “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.”

Rashida took the experience as a lesson, saying, “That was an early lesson for me, because I have been self-righteous in my life, and I really have worked hard to stop looking at things in a binary way. We’re so flawed and so complicated.”

Quincy wasn’t a fan of the late rapper dating his daughter either, telling The New York Times in 2012 that he “wasn’t happy at first.”

But, eventually they mended fences and squashed things. “He’d attacked me for having all these white wives. And my daughter Rashida, who was at Harvard, wrote a letter to The Source taking him apart,” he said. “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.’”

Adding, “If he had had a gun, I would’ve been done. But we talked. He apologized. We became very close after that.”

Rashida would go on to forge a friendship with Shakur and even wrote a paper on him during her junior year of college.

Serena Williams expects to be dancing to Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” for the rest of the summer.

Speaking at ESSENCE Festival in New Orleans over the weekend, the tennis legend called “Not Like Us” a “jam” and crowned the Drake diss track as the “hit of the summer.”

“I love that song. It’s like the hit of the summer,” she said. “When they play that jam, I’m jamming. That jam is jamming.”

Per Complex, Serena added that she’s getting her “Crip walk” on to the Mustard-produced Hot 100-topping banger. “You definitely Crip walking in that song. It’s so cool what he did though. Bringing everyone to the stage? That was incredible. I couldn’t believe it,” she continued.

K. Dot actually name-drops his fellow Compton icon on the track. “From Alondra down to Central, n—a better not speak on Serena,” he raps about Williams while seemingly daring Drake to keep her name in his mouth.

Drake was rumored to be dating Serena Williams throughout the first half of the 2010s. However, in June, Common insinuated that “wars happen over women” after N.O.R.E. brought up how the two were linked to dating Serena at different times. (Common dated Serena from about 2007 to 2010).

“You know, wars happen over women,” Common admitted of his feud with Drake on Drink Champs. “That’s just what it is. But I ain’t going to get at you if you with somebody I was with. But if you start throwing me a couple little, you know, you trying to throw some jabs, you know, and I’m like, ‘Come on man, OK.’”

Williams and Drake were spotted locking lips in 2015 and he pulled up to her U.S. Open tennis match in the same year, which had many thinking the couple was taking their relationship to the next level. However, her rep denied to People in October that year that the two were dating, instead noting that they were merely longtime friends.

Serena tied the knot with Alexis Ohanian in 2017. The tennis icon and entrepreneur share two daughters.

Drake dissed the Reddit co-founder on 2022 Her Loss cut “Middle of the Ocean.” “Sidebar, Serena, your husband a groupie/ He claim we don’t got a problem but/ No, boo, it is like you coming for sushi,” he raps.

Ohanianappeared to reply to Drake via X at the time, writing: “The reason I stay winning is because I’m relentless about being the absolute best at whatever I do—including being the best groupie for my wife & daughter.”

“Not Like Us” reached the Billboard Hot 100’s apex, and is holding firm at No. 3 on this week’s chart. The track could receive a boost next week thanks to the Dave Free and Lamar-directed music video, which arrived on July 4.

Watch Serena talk about “Not Like Us” below: