Fat Joe says that he plans to continue to use the n-word, despite backlash from some of his fans. The New York rapper, who is of Puerto Rican descent, explained his decision during an appearance on The Breakfast Club, Tuesday.
"First of all, my projects is 90 percent-- I’ll give you 80 percent, Black still," Joe said in the interview. "My grandmother’s projects is 99.9 percent Black to be clear. So I’m Spanish. I knew I was Latino, but the whole time I thought I was Black anyway. So, my mom lives there 40 years before I was born, in this project, and I’m born blond hair, green eyes. This shit crazy, right? She brings me there, the first thing is they go, ‘Oh, look at this little n***a Joey. He got green eyes.’ The minute I’m walking, the guys in the building is like, ‘Yo, look at that little n***a Joe, little Fat Joe.’ That’s all I knew my whole life before even elementary."
He went on to blame much of the backlash on "woke society or something" that is plaguing social media, as he puts it.
He continued: "I guess they don’t understand where I come from, where I was born or how I was raised or how I lived my whole entire life. Now we know, we use it as love. We know that the record states that this is a negative word and I wish we never used it, you know? And I try my best … I been saying this thing … in my DNA. It's hard. Really, seriously I been trying to stop, but I been saying this since I was born. I tried the greatest level I can to try to understand if I'm offending anybody and that's cool."
"No one's going to pressure Fat Joe into [not] feeling or saying anything that he loves or believes in," he added. "No one's ever going to do that. You get one life and nobody gonna try to tell me what to say, tell me do, tell me what to think."
Joe's comments came ahead of his big night at the BET Hip Hop Awards, where he served as the show's host.
Check out Joe's appearance on The Breakfast Club below.
[Via]