Fat Joe recently addressed criticism of his use of the n-word while on The Breakfast Club. The conversation came up during a discussion about Joe’s response to Irv Gotti over his comments about Ashanti on Drink Champs.
“He was there when my daughter was born, I love Irv Gotti,” Joe said. “No matter how much I love a person I cannot sit there and watch this man disrespect my sister…I feel like a sucker if I don’t address it. Now, I’ve been so used to IG and cameras being in my face, was that the right platform? or maybe it was a private call? Don’t know, it’s done already. But Irv Gotti’s correct, I’m not his friend. I love him he’s my brother.”
Joe went on to say Gotti’s fans were ruthless and began attacking him because of his comments towards the Murder Inc founder. Charlamange then brought up Fat Joe’s controversial use of the n-word over the years. Joe responded by saying that he thought he could say the word because he grew up around Black peope.
“First of all my projects is 90%, I’ll give you 80% Black still,” Joe said. “My grandmother’s projects is 99.9% 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 blonde 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.”
Joe continued, “It’s a lot of woke society or something going on these days and Twitter and all that 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…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…really seriously I been trying to stop, but I been saying this since I was born.”
You can check out the full interview below.
