Fat Joe is responding to Marc Lamont Hill’s pushback against his use of the N-word.
On Monday (Sept. 7), the rapper issued a response to Hill in the comments section of a Hollywood Unlocked post on Instagram.
"My dad is Afro Cuban i love this guy," he wrote.
The exchange traces back to Fat Joe’s recent appearance on The Joe Budden Podcast and spoke about his racial identity and using the N-word.
"Guys, I don't know if you can fathom that I'm from the block that invented hip-hop. Melle Mel, Grandmaster Flash,” Joe said at the time. “The girls who used to babysit me, they invented, 'Let me hear you say, oooo!' That's Grandmaster Flash. I grew up with Melle Mel right outside the window playing basketball."
He continued, "Fat Joe is the Blackest n***a you ever seen in your life. Go look it up."
Hill, a co-host of the podcast who was not present during the taping of that episode, took up the argument on a new episode of his YouTube series, Just My Thoughts.
“If you use the N-word, you should be Black. If you're going to use the N-word, you should be somebody who could actually be called a n***a. That's my position. That's my belief,” he said. “Now, Fat Joe is making a claim here that he didn't make before, which is ‘I'm the blackest person.’ He's saying he is black. I am not trying to police anybody's ethnicity. I am not trying to police anybody's racial identity. But what I will say is Fat Joe seems to be using black hair ironically or he's using it metaphorically.”
He continued, “We've seen his childhood pictures. We know who his parents are. We know his ethnic origins. We know his ethnic roots. And we know that there's no reason to believe, based on that, that he is Black.”
Fat Joe, who is Puerto Rican and Cuban and was raised in the Forest Houses in the Morrisania section of the Bronx, has made this case for years. His father Ernesto passed away in February 2025.
