Pete Zapartie

The last phone call Lil Jon ever had with his son was him calling back to say sorry. He had no idea it would be the last time he'd hear Nathan's voice. Nathan was 27. NYU grad, music producer, DJ'd under the name Young Slade. For about four years he'd been dealing with physical pain and a lot going on emotionally, and he was in therapy working on it. His dad kept riding him to take better care of himself, and Nathan finally asked him to give him some credit for how hard he was trying. Then early one Saturday morning, Nathan sent him a text. "My love for you is stronger than my fear." Jon took the whole back-and-forth to his own therapist, who told him something pretty simple. His son just wanted to be heard and seen. So he picked up the phone, told Nathan he was sorry, and told him he could see how hard he'd been trying. The next morning Nathan ran out of his house in Milton, Georgia around 6am and left his phone behind. He had a therapy appointment on the books that same day. Three days later a dive team found him in a pond at a park near his house. The medical examiner ruled it an accidental drowning. Jon had pretty much finished writing his memoir when this happened. He'd already named it I Only Shout So You Can Hear Me. This is a guy who's been yelling WHAT and YEAH on records for 30 years, and he built the title of his whole life story around wanting people to hear him. Read that title again now that you know about the phone call. He went back into the book, wrote a new chapter about Nathan, and dedicated the whole thing to him. It came out last Tuesday. His co-writer Paul Cantor says he never had one conversation with Jon where Nathan didn't come up. After Nathan died, Jon says he basically lived on the couch for months. So in this clip you're watching a guy talk about dragging himself back up because his daughter and his partner deserve the best of him. He says he had to relearn how to smile and laugh. And he thanks Allah for giving him 27 years with his son. Nathan was a teenager hanging around the studio when Turn Down for What got made, and his dad called him his good-luck charm. Ten years later Nathan was engineering his father's meditation album. In an interview last year, Nathan said his dad always showed up for him. The man famous for shouting so you'd hear him spent his last call with his son making sure Nathan knew he'd been heard.