Years ago August Alsina and Jada Pinkett Smith had a relationship while she was going through a separation from husband Will Smith, but the news only recently made headlines.
The 27-year-old broke his silence in June and now he’s explaining why he finally opened up about it.
“I really am a private person,” the R&B singer told 360aproko news. “People have never known much about my love life because it’s not important.”
Alsina admitted he spoke up because his private life was starting to affect his professional life and he wanted to regain control over it.
“I never really cared about what people thought of me, but my personal life started to seep into my business life,” he explained. “There were certain falsities about me, and it affected my business relationships.”
The gossip spreading about his relationship with Pinkett Smith made him appear reckless and disrespectful, and that was hurting his livelihood.
“And I’m never okay with that,” he said. “I got three kids to look after. Kill me, hate me, stone me, but bury me an honest man. All I can do is tell the truth.”
His children are Alsina’s three nieces: Chaylin, 14, Amaiya, 13, and Kayden, 11. He became their legal guardian after Alsina’s brother, the girls’ father, was shot and killed in New Orleans in 2010 and their mother died of cancer in 2018.
Alsina and Pinkett Smith, now 48, met in 2015 and started a relationship. At the time, she was separated from Smith with the intention to divorce.
The “Girls Trip” star admitted to the “entanglement” on an episode of her talk show “Red Table Talk.”
“I started a friendship with August and we actually became really, really good friends,” Pinkett Smith described. explained in the episode, which was released on Facebook Watch last month.
She wanted to help the musician with his “mental state” and found resources to help pull him through a troubling time.
“It was a relationship, absolutely. I was in a lot of pain,” Pinkett Smith said. “I was very broken. In the process of that relationship, I definitely realized you can’t find happiness outside of yourself.”
She also wanted to make it clear that Alsina is “not a homewrecker” but she and Will “were going through a process of healing in a much different manner” as a couple.
“I just wanted to feel good,” the Emmy nominee said as to why she starting dating Alsina. “It was really a joy to help heal somebody.”
Although the relationship didn’t work out, Alsina said he has no regrets.
“I totally gave myself to that relationship for years of my life,” the musician told People. “I devoted myself to it, I gave my full self to it — so much so to the point that I can die right now and be OK with knowing that I truly gave myself to somebody.”
