More about: Madonna

A newly discovered letter written by the late rapper Tupac Shakur to superstar Madonna has revealed that their split was caused by racial tensions.

The letter is dated January 15, 1995, which means that it was written from jail where Tupac was serving a four-and-a-half year sentence for sexual assault. It also serves to remind of a time before the digital revolution when people would communicate with fully constructed sentences that would be written on paper by hand and then delivered via a third party.

“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,” he wrote. “But for me at least in my previous perception I felt due to my ‘image’ I would be letting down half of the people who made me what I thought I was. I never meant to hurt you.”

He added that he had grown “spiritually and mentally”: “Please understand my previous position as that of a young man with limited experience with an extremely famous sex symbol.”

He then further offered his friendship and asked for a meeting to discuss the situation. He was bailed from prison in October 1995 but died less than a year later when he was shot in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas. He was just 25-years-old.

Madonna confirmed two years ago that the pair had been an item in 1994.

The letter goes up for auction on the Gotta Have Rock And Roll website from July 19 – 28. Bid will start at $100,000 and it’s expected to fetch considerably more than its asking price. The last letter written by Tupac Shakur sold for more than $170,000. It’s hard to think of an email raising that kind of hullaballoo.

A spokesperson for Gotta Have Rock and Roll said: “It’s from a close contact of Madonna’s who worked with her for over 20 years.”

More about: Madonna