Fat Joe Admits He's 'Confused' By Some Of Today's Rap Music: 'That's Hip Hop?'

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 same shit.”

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 fucking Babyface.”

Fat Joe is confused by current rap music 🧐 pic.twitter.com/e2XEr7isk6

— Complex Music (@ComplexMusic) January 20, 2025

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.”

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He elaborated: “There’s nothing wrong with rapping about money and success, and there’s nothing wrong with rapping about pure sex — I love them both. [But] there has to be more to it than that, to me, in order for a project to be compelling.”

His comments were somewhat echoed by Dr. Dre, who said on Kevin Hart’s Peacock series Hart to Hart in 2023: “Anybody that’s talking about the state of Hip Hop right now, when talking about it from a negative place, sounds like somebody’s fuckin’ grandfather. This is just what it is. Hip Hop is evolving. If you don’t like it, don’t listen to it, you know what I’m saying?”

However, he added: “I’m keepin’ it all the way 100 with you. Some of this shit, most of this shit, I don’t like. I don’t listen to a lot of that shit. But I’m not hatin’ on it. I’m never gonna hate on it.”