In 1997, Tupac Shakur’s mother Afeni Shakur established the Tupac Amaru Shakur Center for the Arts, a performing-arts based community program in Stone Mountain, Georgia that focuses on bringing children opportunities to explore dance, drama, creative writing, and more. As part of the organization’s role in preserving Tupac’s legacy, the center has on display memorabilia related to the late rapper, including a hand-written letter and drawing sent to Ms. Shakur by Marshall Mathers, known better to the world as Eminem. Watch Loud was among the first to report, with an image of the letter and corresponding illustration:

In it, Em’ thanks Ms. Shakur (whom he calls “Afeni”) for “giving us his spirit and yours,” and that Tupac’s music has inspired “my whole career.” The two MCs have long been considered two of Hip-Hop’s greatest MCs, critically and commercially. Earlier this year, they squared off in the final round of our “Finding the GOAT” competition. Eminem eventually won but his admiration of ‘Pac has been well-documented for years (including Em’ musical supervision of Tupac’s posthumous release) making the most surprising aspect of this story not that he reached out to Ms. Shakur with kind words about her son, but that he’s a sensational artist. Before closing, he says “[Tupac] gave me the courage to stand up and say, ‘F**k the world!’ ‘This is who I am! And if you don’t like it, go f**k yourself!'” Notably, both ideas have proven to be integral to Eminem’s message.

With the weekend death of Outlawz member Hussein Fatal over the weekend, Tupac’s memory is once again being rekindled, and as Eminem writes in the letter, ‘Pac was “the true definition of a ‘Soldier.'”

Do you hear and see the Tupac Shakur influence in Eminem’s work, especially in recent times?

Related: Read 2Pac’s 1995 Letter From Prison To Public Enemy’s Chuck D