Transcript of Lil Jon On Grief: ‘Don’t Hold It In’

Welcome to "All There Is," wherever you are in the world and in your grief. I'm glad you're here. My guest today is Lil Jon—he's a rapper, DJ, and producer known for hits like "Get Low" and "Turn Down for What." In February 2026, his 27-year-old son Nathan, who was also a DJ and musician known as DJ Young Slade, went missing near Nathan's home in Georgia. Three days later, his body was found in a pond nearby. His death was ruled an accidental drowning. Lil Jon has a memoir that just came out called "I Only Shout So You Can Hear Me."

Thank you for having me.

You wear sunglasses everywhere.

Yeah.

In every photo I've seen of you, it's pretty much in sunglasses. I didn't realize there's a reason why you wear sunglasses all the time, not just for mystique and performance and all that looks good. As a little kid, you almost poked your eye out.

Yeah. My mother was a diabetic, and one day I got into her needles, and for some reason I was playing with the insulin needle, and I noticed you push the needle and the air would go through the needle. And for some reason I wanted to feel what the air felt like on my eye, stupid little kid, and I ended up poking my eye. And I didn't tell my mom because I was scared I was going to get in trouble, so I think she noticed a couple days later that my eye was, like, bloodshot or whatever, and basically I had a traumatic cataract.

You had a metal eye patch.

Yeah, I had a little metal eye patch, and then I had to do all of these exercises to train my eye muscles to get tighter because my eye would drift. So the sunglasses was to hide that.

Can you see out of the eye?

The eye is, it's like blurry. Most people nowadays wouldn't get it, but like a snowy TV. They don't know what that is anymore.

I do.

So, but like a really snowy TV, I can see figures and the colors, but I can't—the clarity is not there. So it's twofold: to hide that and, you know, superstar.

Before your son died, had you had much experience with loss, with grief?

My mom had a stroke, and she was in the hospital for about six, eight months, not responsive. And then she eventually passed. And then before her, early 2000s, my dad had bone marrow cancer, and his death was the first major death I had to deal with in my close family. That one was hard-hitting because I remember him getting diagnosed with the cancer, and then I remember him just slowly deteriorating. The last time I saw him, tubes all in his body, he was probably a fraction of the weight that he was originally, just skin and bones, and couldn't talk.

He wanted to talk to you before he died.

Yeah, 100%.

How old were you when you learned that your dad was not your biological dad?

Writing a book.

You did not know until you were writing this book.

I did not know. It was basically to dispel a rumor that my father wasn't my father, because at my mother's funeral, a man came up to me and was like, "I'm your real dad." I'm grieving my mother, and I'm like, "Who is this dude?" And my family was like, "Ah, don't worry about him." And I was like, "Ah, whatever. That's not my dad." And then I thought about it. Once I started to go through the ancestry stuff, one of my cousins, he shared his DNA profile with us, and I did not match him at all. And so that was like, "Whoa, what's going on with that?"

So you have a biological brother and sister through your biological father.

Yes, through my biological father.

Right. You have two brothers you thought were full brothers.

Right.

They're really half-brothers.

Half-brothers, right.

What is that like to discover that?

It's like shock, and then it's like, you go through, "How did this happen? How could this happen?" Then you go through anger, like, "Why did my mom do this? And did my father know? Did my biological father know?" It's just so many emotions you go through, and it's just, it tears you apart because I can't go back and talk to my mom and ask her questions like, "Why?" or "How?" or anything. And that was just tearing me apart for weeks until I had to say, "I got to stop going crazy over this."

And is he still alive?

He's not alive either.

Was it the guy who came up to you the.

No, it was not. So all of that is crazy. I can't have a conversation with him either. And I don't even think he knew anything about me. And then what came up in the DNA is that he had other kids that he didn't know about too.

Your dad who raised you was.

Willie.

Willie. So when Willie was saying goodbye to you, you don't know if he knew. Because in the book you write, "When I found out the truth about my father, it felt like something inside me had been torn apart."

Yeah.

Before, everything was simple. My mother was my mother, my father was my father. But after that moment, it was as if the foundation of my life had crumbled. My brothers were still my brothers, but now they were only half-brothers, and the man I had called my father wasn't my father anymore.

Right.

Is that a form of grief, do you think, that feeling?

Yeah. It's mourning what reality I thought I was living. It's just so surreal to go through something like that. I was 53 years old when I found this out. So I went through more than half of my life, and then something like this hits me, and it's just like, it's hard to digest.

Yeah.

And it is a form of grieving because that life that I thought was not actually exactly what I thought it was. And it's hard because I can't go talk to my biological father either and say, "Hey, I'm your son," and he say, "Wow, you're successful. I'm proud of you." Like, I can't have those conversations.

Does it change the way you view the man who you always believed was your dad?

I don't know if he knew. And I went through a million scenarios, and I kind of don't think he knew. I don't think he knew because I think if he knew, he would have eventually come and said something. It makes me feel sorry for him knowing that I'm not his biological son.

Do you still think of him as your dad?

I still think of him as my dad. You know, I learned a lot from him, and I didn't understand things as a kid, but as an adult, when you become a father and you're working hard and trying to provide for the family, I totally get it.

You talk about in the book, this idea that there's history in families that repeats through generations. And it's something I've been thinking about a lot lately, and I totally believe, and I just find it fascinating.

Yeah. Trauma is stored in your DNA. I believe that whatever your parents are going through at the time of conception, that can be passed along to you. Or whatever they were going through in their life that's stored in their DNA, that trauma could be passed along to you, and we have to try to break the chain. And then it's also actions, like whatever our parents are going through as we're growing up, how they're dealing with that trauma that is passed to us.

100%.

You know?

My mom had the sadness behind her eyes. She had a very traumatic childhood and didn't really have parents. And I started realizing I had this same sadness behind my eyes, and I'm actively working to try to, you know, fix that and not pass that on. But it takes a lot of work.

Yeah. That's something that I went through in grieving my son, is every day just on the couch and crying throughout the day and just sad. And I realized my daughter and my partner, they deserve a better version of myself. Like, my daughter, I don't want that to be her memory of me. I want her to see me laughing, me and her mother loving each other. Because that's another thing that I didn't realize until I was writing this book when me and my brother was talking.

When your son was born, did you feel like you knew how to be a dad?

No. I did not know what I was doing. I was not ready. I was, it was 1998, late 20s, still trying to figure out life, still trying to figure out my career. I was still at So So Death working. I was starting to become an artist, but I hadn't figured it out yet. Yeah, I was not ready to be a dad.

What happened to Nathan?

It was an accidental drowning. It was not suicide. It was not with his mental stability at all. I remember getting the call, and it was the worst call I ever got. As a parent, we are always trying to protect our kids. When I got the call that he was missing, my heart dropped, of course. Initially, I thought he might have just run off and just been hiding somewhere or got picked up by a friend.

You felt that?

I could feel it. I'm a very spiritual person, and my son is a part of me too, you know? So I did not feel his presence anymore in that home, and I knew he was gone. And that whole week while he was gone, it felt like I got stabbed in the chest, and every day they kept pushing the knife in deeper and twisting it. That was Tuesday to Friday before he was found.

He had left the house, and they found something like psilocybin in his system. Do you think he was just on a journey and was disoriented?

He was disoriented, definitely. Whatever happened, he didn't plan on that happening. I think he didn't know where he was. It was cold too. It was freezing. It was 30 degrees in Atlanta.

They had put divers in the water in a pond near your son's house.

Yeah.

They didn't find him then, but then they drained the pond.

Yeah, they drained it lower. And that day, it was medical examiners and all kind of extra crews there and news helicopters in there. I just kind of knew they were going to find him.

Once you got to the scene, you were like, "Oh, this is different today."

Yeah. And I saw a tent, and I saw a bunch of guys around something in a tent. So I was like, "They already pulled him out." When I finally got the news that he was found, it felt like a part of me had been ripped out of my body. Part of me was gone. Nate was a wonderful young man, and he's 27 years old. And recently, he came to me and said, "I want to have a closer relationship with you." And I think it was partially because he was becoming more of a man, and he was understanding things.

In what way?

He came to me as a ladybug. It might have been the night after he was found. A ladybug was out of nowhere. It was on the side, my side of the bed, and it was just on the dresser, a ladybug. And what was ironic was on the way to his house the day he was found, it was a ladybug on the car. And I haven't seen ladybugs forever in Atlanta like that. But it was one in my room on my side of the bed. I think that was him coming to me. And then another time, I was on the road.

It's still so recent. It was February.

Yeah. And it's hard. I had a therapy session. I do EMDR. It helps me to get through a lot. I was in EMDR a couple of weeks ago, and I had a really big breakdown. And I realized that my mother, when me and my brothers were kids, I'm the oldest. So I remember she said, "Take care of your brothers." So I've always had to be the strong one. I was always had to be the one that kept it together for the family. And I realized all of that, keeping it together, even through what I've been through, I just collapsed, basically, in therapy.

There's a video of you with Pitbull at that moment. Is it all right if we play that?

Yeah.

Thank y'all for being an amazing audience tonight. Thank you for supporting me in my career. And I got to say thank you, Pit, because I really needed to be out here on this road to get through what I've been through with my son this year and to be in front of people every night showing so much love, your crew, your team, my crew, my team. I want to thank everybody on this tour because I really needed this love.

It's true. I needed it. We don't realize what we need all the time because we're trying to be so strong.

It's not easy being the strong child.

No, it's the hardest. And that's what I realized in my therapy session recently is that we are strong and we can we get through it, but it's hard. It's so much harder on us, and it's going to hit us harder later.

I've always said to myself as a little kid, I am the strong child. And it's only recently, the last couple of years, that I've really realized my definition of strength was probably not the greatest definition, that my definition of being strong was pushing everything deep down inside and not grieving and not crying and not dealing with this and propelling myself forward. That's my that was my idea of strength. And it sounds like that was your idea too.

Yeah, you kind of tuck it away. It's just like when the police officer came and said, "We found your son." It hit me, but then I had to get it together to deal with everything.

More with Lil Jon in a moment. Was he always interested in music?

Yeah, from even before he was born. I remember I was in the studio session, and he was in his mom's belly. And every time we would play the music, he would kick. And when the music stopped, he stopped kicking. When he was a little baby, he would crawl. I had a little back room where I would make my beats and have my turntables. He would crawl back there and hit on the drum pad, the MPC pads, and just want to be back there in the room of music. And then at like 11 years old, I remember we were in the car, and he would be able to tell the DJs, like the DJs mixing on the radio, he could tell me what song was coming in.

Wow.

I didn't even push him to it. Like, I'm the type of parent, I'm not going to force nothing on you because I want you to do it. It's what you want to do. And I'm like, "If you're serious, then, you know, I'll get you some lessons." And, you know, so he was he was serious, and he didn't let it go.

We also have a clip, I think, of you talking about your son when he was around 13 or so. Let's play it.

Young Slay is my son's name. As a parent, you know, your kid's going to want to do this and that. They want to jump into all kind of stuff. But, you know, I believe you got to support your, you know, you know, what they want to do. And one thing, I'm very hard on him and very critical. And I saw that he was actually good for his age. I mean, he has a great DJ ear, a great ear for music. Music has been a part of his life before he was even on Earth.

Yeah. It's so recent. Is it hard to see pictures of him?

Yeah. When he passed, I was like, I want him to open up the tour. I want him to speak. So I created a montage of him talking to open up the tour. Sometimes it hits me and I'm a tear, my eyes water. Sometimes I just can't look at the screen. I feel his presence. Every show of the tour, I created his logo. I put it on the back of my shirt that I wear every single show. It's his logo with wings and his date he passed. So he's on my back, and he had a tattoo on his arm of my autograph.

If you're feeling nervous backstage or something, you talk to your son.

Yeah. I say, "All right, let's do this. It's time." Like every show, he's with me. He's right there on stage. And I had someone DM me that was a psychic, and she said she saw a green aura next to me on stage the whole time I was performing. And she's like, "That was your son there with you performing." Sometimes memories hit me, knock me back. And yeah, some days I just cry because I just know I'm not going to be able to have another conversation with him.

You were a pull bearer.

Yeah.

You carried his casket.

I felt like I was there for him coming into this world. I brought him into this world, and I wanted to be protector of him all the way to letting him to rest, you know? It was a spiritual thing for me as a father and a protector of my son that I had to do that. The funeral was hard for me, really hard, because just walking in the door, it's these big pictures of him. It's all of this energy of grief in the room that's hitting me.

In the book, you say that he was struggling with emotional difficulties and pain, physical pain.

Yeah.

You write, "There were days when the pain was so bad that he wouldn't even be able to get off the couch. He couldn't think, he couldn't move, and he couldn't figure out how to get long-term relief."

Yeah.

That must have been very hard to see him going through that.

Yeah. As a parent, it hurts you whenever your child is in any kind of discomfort. And I was literally trying to do everything I can to help him. And I remember he came to LA. We were talking, and he was explaining it to me. And he would get frustrated because he felt like nobody could understand what he was going through. And he was basically get these knots throughout all over his body. And it would even be in his head. That's why he couldn't sometimes get out of bed or whatever, because he couldn't even think because it was just debilitating.

Yeah.

I said to him, "I do care a lot. You are my only son, and I worry about you a lot. You are so talented and extremely smart. Nothing should be holding you back. I pray for the days you have no more discomfort and no more fear. You will excel in everything you want to do. Those days are coming. Love you." So it really hit me when I say, "I pray for the days you have no more discomfort and no more fear."

You talked to him on the phone too.

Yeah. Saturday night, we had a talk. It was a decent conversation, but at one point, I kind of got on him for, like, I had sent him some supplements to start taking, and he hadn't started taking it. And he was kind of trying to tell me, "Hey, I'm on it. I got a lot going on and da da da da da." And we ended up ending the conversation in a good way. And then that Monday, I talked to my therapist about my me and my son's conversation and our text messages afterward.

I found it hard for a long time to talk about my dad or my brother. I mean, I really just didn't. Are you able to do that without, like, hitching your voice? Or is it too is it.

No, I can do it. Sometimes it hits me, and sometimes I'm fine. I can cry. I'm open to it more than I've ever been in my entire life. I've cried so much in the last four years because I've just been emotionally evolving and maturing and being able to let the emotions and energy flow through me and flow out.

Grief feels so lonely.

Oh, yeah.

Certainly to me, and I think many people. And so to hear others' experiences, we just don't talk about this stuff very much.

Yeah. And we are the strong ones too, so we kind of hold it in. But to share is to help and to uplift. And that's what I believe is part of my calling. I've been so private with my career, my whole life, and now I feel like whatever I can give to help people, I'm going to give, even if it's my most innermost thoughts and feelings that hurt or whatever. I'm going to share it because somebody else might need to hear and see how I'm dealing with it so they can also get through it. And people ask me, "How do I get through it?"

Is it hard sometimes to do that?

It's not hard to live. It's just hard to live without. It's just hard to live without that piece of you that's gone. But you still speak to them. You still feel them, and you have all of those memories. And I'm blessed that my son was on this MTV show, I think, the year before he passed, and he did all of this press for that show. So I'm blessed to have all these interviews he did. So whenever I want to hear him laugh or see a smile, hear his voice, I can go look at the interviews.

I always usually end by asking somebody if there's something you've learned in your grief that would be helpful for others.

What I've learned is to just let it flow out, like, give what you can. And if the feeling comes over you, let it let it come over you and let it let all the emotions pass through you and come out. Cry. Cry. Let it let it come out. It's OK to cry. It's OK to let whatever you're feeling come out. If you want to scream, you want to yell, you want to bang on something, let it all out.

Well, thank you so much for talking to us.

Thanks for having me.

And for telling us about Nathan.

Thank you. Thank you.