Lil Jon On Grief: ‘Don’t Hold It In’

0:00Every day, animals across the country face abuse and neglect. And every day, the ASPCA shows up to rescue animals in crisis. But they can't do it alone. Visit ASPCA.org slash need. Become a donor today to provide the care and shelter these animals urgently need. And for a limited time, the ASPCA will send you a free gift as a special thank you. Visit ASPCA.org slash need. 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.

0:53Three days later, his body was found in a pond nearby. His death was ruled an accidental drowning. Little John has a memoir that just came out called I Only Shout So You Can Hear Me. While writing it, he says he also learned for the first time that the man who raised him, the man he thought was his dad, was not actually his biological father. I sat down with Little John last month in Los Angeles. Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you for having me. You wear sunglasses everywhere. And every photo I've seen of you is 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, and it looks good.

1:32As 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 So I think she noticed a couple of days later that my eye was like bloodshot or whatever. And basically I had a traumatic cataract. They had to remove my cornea and I had to have all these surgeries and then go to school with an eye patch on.

2:13You 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 no more. 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, the high, that, and, you know, superstar. Before your son died, had you had much experience with loss, with grief?

2:52My 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. I went to the hospital and I remember going into the room and talking to him and I could just see pain and sorrow in his eyes.

3:36He was trying to talk to me, but of course he couldn't speak. And I just remember distinctly how his eyes were. And I think a tear rolled down his eye. I realized that he was trying to tell me goodbye and that he loved me because that night he died. He was waiting to go. 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 the 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.

4:17I'm grieving my mother. And I'm like, who is this dude? And my family was like, I don't worry about him. And I was like, 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? And then as we dug deeper, biological brother and sister came up. And it was just like, I felt like I got hit by bricks. So you have a biological brother and sister through your biological father? Yes, through my biological father.

4:56You 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.

5:40And I went outside of my balcony and I just had a conversation with my mom. And I let everything out that I wanted to say to her. And I came to the acceptance that I wasn't going to get the answers that I wanted. But me speaking to her, letting it out, helped me to get some kind of peace and to be able to accept it. It is what it is. And what's crazy - And is he still alive? He's not alive either. Was it the guy who came up to you? 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.

6:22Your dad who raised you was Willie. So when Willie was saying goodbye to you, you don't know if he knew. Because in the book you write, when I find out the truth about my father, it felt like something inside me had been torn apart. Before everything was simple. My mother was my mother and 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.

7:02It'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. 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?

7:43I 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. 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.

8:26And 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 as well. A hundred percent.

9:06You 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 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 deserved 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.

9:53He was like, our parents weren't affectionate. He's like, I never seen mom and dad affectionate. And I thought about it. I had a different view because I remember her loving on us so much. And I hadn't thought about it in his way of mom and dad. And he was right. So I had to make sure I show affection to my partner. I'm loving to my partner in front of my daughter. I had to pull myself out of that rut I was in and just try to be happier for them. When your son was born, do 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.

10:39I was still at SoSoDeaf 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. I went to his house. I didn't feel his presence anymore.

11:22I knew he was gone. I didn't say anything to anybody while I was there. 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.

12:10Whatever 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.

12:52So 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. And I think maybe I feel deep down he knew he just needed to get closer to me for some reason. And I think it was because of him leaving this world early. In the last three, four years, we've been really getting closer together, doing a lot of things, traveling together more.

13:43Or I would come in town and I would stay at his house, just watch TV, watch movies, and just talk. Talk about life, spirituality. He was a spiritual person like me. And we just started to get really close, a lot closer over the last three years or so. I always thought that he would be burying me. and here I am going to the funeral home and picking out caskets and talking to the medical examiner, getting his body released. And some days I don't even know how I was able to get through it. And it's the hardest thing I ever had to deal with in my life. And when he passed, too, I was planning the tour with Pitbull.

14:27So I'm having to grieve and lay my son to rest as well as plan this world tour. And that was extremely hard. And I got through it. And I remember the first date, finally making it on stage and getting through the show was just like a release. because it was just so hard to some days just even get out of bed or get off the couch or just crying throughout the day. And my son gave me one year for Father's Day a blanket, and it was our first fishing trip together. So he put that picture on the blanket. And sometimes I would just lay on the couch with this blanket over me, and my daughter would come up and touch his face and say, Nate, Nate, and hug the blanket like she knew, you know?

15:30And sometimes she would see him, like she would be like, Nate? Like she would point. And I believe he wasn't crossing over so he could let everybody know he was okay because he came to me a couple times too. 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 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.

16:11I think that was him coming to me. And then another time, I was on the road. I was in the hotel, and I was laying on my back, and I just felt, it felt like he came and hugged me like this through the bed. And he was telling me, I'm sorry. He was like, I wish I was still there. I love you. And he was just sorry for leaving. He was sorry for what happened. and he just wanted to just tell me just, yeah, how much he loved me. And like, he just wanted to spend more time here and even just with me too. 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.

16:57I 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 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. And it hit me like, this is why I was able to do that. It's because of what my mother always told me, I had to be the strong one. and at that point everything just came out and I realized I hadn't given myself time to mourn it takes time to heal and I kept myself busy that's what happened when my mom died same thing I kept myself busy I kept myself so busy this year that I didn't let myself mourn and even the last show that we did here in America, I broke down.

18:05It's this one point in the show where Pit Bull and myself are on stage together and he asked the crowd to say thank you to me because of me believing in him, giving him opportunities, so on and so forth. And so the crowd says, thank you, Little John. And then I say thank you to the crowd. And then I turn to him and say, Thank you for bringing me out because I needed that positivity from the people and the crew and everybody. I needed that euphoria of good energy because I don't know what I would do if I were just sitting at home in it. And I needed that. Like, I needed to laugh again. I needed to be silly and interact with people and feel other people's energy and make people happy too.

18:58And even share my message to help. I believe that we have to do that. Like we have to share so other people can see that they can get through it too. That was a moment because I broke down on stage and I just really realized how much I needed that. There's a video of you with Pitbull at that moment. Is that right if we played that? Yeah.

19:21Thank you for being an amazing audience tonight. Thank you for supporting me in my career. And I gotta say thank you, Pitt, 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.

19:52It'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 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.

20:44That's 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.

21:06Was he always interested in music? Yeah, from even before he was born. I remember I was in a 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.

21:46Like most people can't tell you what, they're not a DJ. They don't know what, how the blend is going and what song is coming in. He knew. And I said, you know what? I'm going to get you in the DJ Academy. So I got him a scholarship to scratch DJ Academy at 11 years old. 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 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.

22:25Let's put it. Young Slade is my son's name. As a parent, you know, the kids are going to want to do this and that. They want to jump into all kind of stuff. You know, I believe you got to support, 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. 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.

23:08Sometimes 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, but with wings and his date he passed. So he's on my back and he had a tattoo on his arm of my autograph. And he surprised me. He was like, check it out, dad. And it was for him to be reminded of where he comes from. And after he passed, I went to the same tattoo artist and I got his signature. So he's forever with me here and it's right next to my crystal. So it's all of this power and energy and love.

23:52So he's always with me in some capacity. And every day I wake up and pray, I speak to him. So I speak to him every single day too. And then my partner, she got me this coin. It's him and me engraved on both sides, like his pictures of us engraved. So every show I had that in my pocket and I would hold it to my chest and talk to him and, you know, say something like, okay, let's do this. I need you to carry me through this. I need you to hold me up and give me the strength to get through it. And I talk to him before I even hit the stage. And I put the coin back in my pocket. And then I start the show.

24:31If 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. Wow. And she's like, that was your son there with you performing. Sometimes memories hit me, knocked 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. I can't call him. Every now and then knocks me back. I just cry, you know, just to know that you can't have the conversation anymore, that you can't hug him.

25:17You can't kiss him. That's what hurts the most. I know he's gone, but I just can't accept that he's gone. It's hard. I didn't want to see him in the casket either. I didn't want to see. I wanted to keep my last memories of him good memories. I didn't want to see. Because I know I remember seeing my dad in the casket, and it didn't look like my dad. And my mom in the casket didn't look like my mom. And I don't want those to be the last memories I have. You were a pallbearer. 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 laying him the rest, you know.

26:00It 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, these big pictures of him, it's all of this energy of grief in the room. that's hitting me. And then it's also the casket. And then all of that hits me at once. And I'm just, I'm just crying. And I'm just one of the worst days of my life having to go through that, you know?

26:40Yeah. 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.

27:22And he was basically get these knots throughout all over his body. And they 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. He was getting some relief from stretch and release. I had him doing acupuncture. I tried as a father everything I could to help him out. It would give him temporary relief, but not long-term relief. and it was something that he was dealing with every single day and the one thing that gave me comfort when they did tell me he was he was found is that he was no longer in any pain and he also had fear he was fearful of how people would judge his music so he was very critical of his himself and he was no longer in fear actually that's in the last text I went back After he had passed like a month later and looked at the last message that we had text each other.

28:22I'm going to actually read it. 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. And that's in the last text that I text him. And that's exactly what he has. He has no more fear and no more discomfort. But I thought that was just like really crazy and kind of foreshadowing.

29:16You 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 me and my son's conversation and our text messages afterward. And she was basically saying he wants to be seen. He wants to be acknowledged that he's trying and so on and so forth.

29:54And I was like, oh, it made me look at it differently. So I called him and I apologized. I said, I'm sorry. I said, I see you and I hear you. I see you're making efforts and I appreciate you. And I told him all these great things. It wasn't a long conversation, but it was a really extremely powerful conversation. And for it to be our last conversation, I'm glad that it was because his best friend told me that he was so happy with that conversation. His best friends showed up at his house that night and he said that as soon as he walked in the door, he was like, man, guess what happened, man? My dad called me and apologized.

30:41And he was running around the house just like so happy. So it makes me feel at peace to know that he left feeling loved by me. And the fact that me and my son were able to end on such a high note, that made me be so much more at peace. 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 painful? 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.

31:33grief feels so lonely 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 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.

32:13And people ask me how I get through it. I'm like, I got to keep living because I'm still here. And he would want me to keep living. Your loved ones want you to keep living. You can't give up. You're blessed to be here. You have a life. You can still love. You can still laugh. You need to live. You were put here to live. We are here to live. So we have to keep living and we have to live for those that are not here and keep their memories alive within us or do through whatever else we're doing. Like I'm sharing my son's memory through every show, but we have to keep living. Is it hard sometimes to do that?

32:48It'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 his 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.

33:25And 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 come over you. And let all the emotions pass through you and come out. Cry. Cry. Let it come out. It's okay to cry. It's okay to let whatever you're feeling come out. You want to scream, you want to yell, you want to bang on something, let it all out. Don't hold it in. We have to keep living, even though we've lost. We have to keep living for them. Well, thank you so much for talking to us. Thanks for having me. And for telling us about Nathan. Thank you. Thank you. If you have thoughts you'd like to share about the conversation with Little John, you can leave us a comment on our grief community page, cnn.com slash allthereis.

34:20You can also leave comments in our voicemail box, or if there's something you've learned in grief that would be helpful for others, we'd love to hear from you there as well. Leave us a voicemail at 404-827-1805. On Thursday, November 12th, we'll have a new episode of the podcast with Mary Cosby. She's a cast member on Bravo's The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. Her son, Robert Cosby Jr., died in February 2026 after a struggle with addiction. He was just 23. Dying from a broken heart is a choice, and you can choose it. And it did visit me, and I did. You thought about it. I did. I did. And that little voice was like, no, Mom, go on.

35:03When they go, they take a piece of you. He took a chunk of me, so it did visit me, and I chose not to go there. And I don't want to have those days where I just stay in the bed and I cry and I can't get out of bed because I think that's more wearing on my mental. I don't want to make it a mental thing. My conversation with Mary Cosby comes out Thursday, November 12th. Thanks for listening. Wherever you are in the world and in your grief, you're not alone.