by Sam Moore
Fat Joe has admitted that he doesn’t understand a lot of current Hip Hop.
Speaking to Complex, the “Lean Back” legend confessed that some of the rap music released by younger generations leaves him feeling “confused.”“I encourage the youth and I love the youth, [but] I’ve sat in traffic and [heard the music] — I felt like they were playing devil music right next to me,” he said. “I’m like, ‘Yo, what the fuck? That’s Hip Hop?!’ They got some weird shit going on.”
Joe added: “I fuck with them, I’m always gonna salute them. I don’t know how they spiraled into this particular sound. Hip Hop’s so diverse — we got Lauryn Hill, we got Biz Markie, you got Eric B. and Rakim, you got Nas… You’re not gonna open this shit and hear the Bronx native then explained his gripes with the rap music currently emanating from his hometown: “Sometimes when I’m listening, especially in New York youth, I’m hearing the same shit, the same beats, and I’m numb. I’m like, ‘Yo, this is crazy.’
“[Back in my day], if we had a love song, it’d be LL [Cool J] going, ‘I need love / Sometimes I stare at the room, I hear my conscience call.’ [Now], if you hear a love song, it’s over the same beat and it’s, ‘I’ll kill you! Fuck ya mother!’ It’s the same shit. I’m confused.”
Fat Joe also emphatically ruled out the prospect of him putting his prejudice to the side and making a “sexy drill” — the smoother, more sensual style of the NYC subgenre popularized by likes of Cash Cobain and Ice Spice — song.
“That’s definitely not in the works,” he said while holding his head in his hands. “I got a love song with fu** Babyface.”
Fat Joe is not the only rap veteran to be baffled by some of the recent developments in the genre.
Last year, LL Cool J was asked in an interview with The New York Times what he feels is missing from today’s Hip Hop, simply replying: “Songwriting.”