Eight months after the death of his son, Lil Jon is speaking openly about what it took to keep going. In an emotional conversation with Keke Palmer that left her in tears, the Atlanta music icon described the depths of his grief after losing Nathan Smith, known professionally as DJ Young Slade, and the people and moments that helped him start to live again.
Nathan was found dead in Georgia in February after being reported missing. He was 27, a graduate of NYU, and a talented producer, artist and engineer who had worked alongside his father in the studio. In the months that followed, Lil Jon says, grief took over his days. “I’m just in a very down place. I’m crying every day. I’m just on the couch,” he told Palmer.
What pulled him up, he said, was the family still in front of him. “I realized I had to pick myself up because my daughter and my partner don’t need to see the worst of me. They need to get the best of me. They deserve that,” he said. Even small moments with his young daughter helped. “She would just be looking sometimes, or just come next to me, and it would lift me back up.”
Keke Palmer got EMOTIONAL and teared up as Lil Jon opened up about GRIEVING the tragic loss of his 27-year-old son Nathan, revealing how he had to learn to SMILE AGAIN, find joy in life and pull himself out of a DARK PLACE for his family 💔 “I realized I had to pick myself up, because my daughter and my partner deserve the best of me. I had to learn to smile again and laugh again… I have gratitude for Allah for giving me my son for 27 years. I appreciate every memory… If I can get through it, you can get through it. You have to keep living, keep spreading love, and keep spreading joy”
— Killa 🌺 (@KillaKreww) October 27, 2026
Learning to feel joy again didn’t come easily. Lil Jon remembered the first party he had to perform at after burying his son. “It just felt wrong to smile,” he said. “I had to learn to smile again. And I had to learn to laugh again.”
Getting back on the road became part of that healing. While touring with Pitbull, he broke down at the tour’s final show in America after realizing how much he had needed it.
“I needed to feel all of that energy from all of those people in every city, to see those smiling faces, to see them having a good time,” he said. “I needed to be around the crew, my crew, people making me laugh again, making me joke, have a good time. I needed all of that to uplift me.”
Work gave him something to hold on to as well. The tour was still being put together when Nathan died, and Lil Jon credited Southern soul artist Tony Armani, whom he had started working with the year before, for reaching out right after the funeral and giving him a project to focus on. “His project, getting the tour together and then getting on the road, all of that helped me to come back to life,” he said, “and not just be in my darkness.”
Lil Jon has also been writing his way through the loss. His memoir, I Only Shout So You Can Hear Me, was released October 20. He had nearly finished it before Nathan’s death, then returned to the manuscript to write about his grief and dedicated the book to his son.
“If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone. And if I can get through it, you can get through it,” he said. “If somebody is out here dealing with loss, understand that you have to keep living. Your loved one would want you to keep living and enjoying life and not give up. We have to keep spreading love. We have to keep spreading joy.”
