Fat Joe has a complicated relationship with the N-word. He uses it, even though he is a light-skinned Hispanic.
But he has guilt.
" I wish we never used it," Joe said last year on The Breakfast Club. "And I try my best. But you know Fat Joe, his nose, his green eyes. I've been saying this thing. It's in my DNA. It's hard. Really, seriously. I've been trying to stop."
In a new interview with Talib Kweli, Joe no longer sounds so guilty.
Instead, he just owns it.
“Explaining it to people at this point is like, mind-boggling to me, cause it’s been like, ‘What’s up Fat Joe? You my n*gga’ since I’m 2 years old," Joe said of the n-word. "You taking it offensive? Then what do I look like a slave owner to you? Or do I look like the cop who killed George Floyd? I got to think about you. Cause you obviously know that you just said I’m the most important piece of Hip Hop. You obviously know I'm with Black people all day. I fight for Black people, I fight for Latinos every day of my life. "I don’t try to let people make me second guess what I do because that’s not what Hip Hop was founded on. The origin of the word is foul anyway. I don’t know how we made it cool. If I’m driving right down the block and somebody’s doing something to the blackest lady in the world. I’m jumping out. I’m dying. So it’s offensive to me when people say, ‘Yo, why do you use n*gga?’ Like, don’t you know?”