Veteran Bronx rapper Fat Joe recently responded

to criticism surrounding him using the n-word and blamed “woke” people for the backlash.

Fat Joe fired back at hip-hop fans who said he shouldn’t be using the term via an interview with Power 105.1’s The Breakfast Club.

“First of all, my projects [is] 90 percent–I’ll give you 80 percent–Black still,” he said during the interview, which aired on Oct. 4. Joe, born Joseph Antonio Cartagena to Puerto Rican and Cuban parents, is originally from Forest Houses in the South Bronx–a predominantly Latino neighborhood. “My grandmother’s projects is 99.9 percent Black to be clear. So I’m Spanish. I knew I was Latino, but the whole time I thought I was Black anyway. So, my mom lives there 40 years before I was born, in this project, and I’m born [blonde] hair and green eyes. This s**t crazy, right? She brings me there [and] the first thing is they go, ‘Oh, look at this little n***a, Joey. He got green eyes.’ The minute I’m walking, the guys in the building [are] like, ‘Yo, look at that little nigga Joe, little Fat Joe’ That’s all I knew my whole life before even elementary.”

He continued, saying “woke society” doesn’t “understand where he comes from.”

“It’s a lot of woke society or something going on these days and Twitter and all that,” the rapper said regarding the backlash. “I guess they don’t understand where I come from, where I was born or how I was raised, or how I lived my whole entire life.”

His sentiments have long been reiterated as he’s been called out for using the n-word on several occasions and addressed the backlash with the same response. One shining example is when Black Twitter dragged the South Bronx native for saying n***a incessantly during his Verzuz battle against Ja Rule in 2021. However, Joe insisted that no one could stop him from using the word.

“No one’s going to pressure Fat Joe into [not] feeling or saying anything that he loves or believes in,” he said on The Breakfast Club. “No one’s ever going to do that. You get one life, and nobody [is] gonna try to tell me what to say, tell me [to] do, tell me what to think.”

Black Twitter, once again, called Joe out for it following the interview.

“Fat Joe really got on the Breakfast Club and basically said that he says the N-word because he grew up around mostly black people and always referred to him as that, so he thought he was black & people ok with it. Now, if a white person used this excuse, it would never fly,” @AshleyShyMiller tweeted on Oct. 4.

Joe was last seen hosting the 2022 BET Awards and performing alongside fellow veteran Bronx rapper Remy Ma on Oct. 5.