In the ongoing complications of hip-hop culture, history, and individual experience, Mexican OT has once again thrown the debate wide open with some controversial words reigniting an age-old question: Who gets to use the N-word?
OT didn't hold back during a June 18 appearance on Angela Yee's Lip Service podcast. The Texas-born rapper defiantly doubled down on the heated term after fellow artist Cleotrapa raised the issue of cancel culture and the phrase.
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"I feel like saying it…What f### are you going to do about it?" OT fired back, saying his vocabulary and perspective were shaped by his upbringing in a predominantly Black neighborhood. "I came up with these muthafas. I grew up fighting with them. I ate with them … did bad s### with them. I grew up loving them."
For OT, it's more than just a word but a reflection of his life, shoulder-to-shoulder with Black friends and family. Yet even while he conceded that some might be offended by his viewpoint, he wasn't backing down: "If you are from where I'm from, what the f* you gonna do about it?"
Cleotrapa was eager to remind him that everyone listening to that background doesn't erase perception. "Some people will always find it disrespectful," she added, alluding to the deeper, generations-old wounds that the word evokes for many in the Black community.
And the rapper Anycia did no such thing. In a pithy post on social media, she slammed the door on the notion that non-Black people should feel free to use the word: "If u not Black. stop saying n####. period. Idk why that's so hard???"
She wasn't alone. Monaleo followed promptly afterward right after Juneteenth, even with this emotionally charged tweet that Anycia shared: "If not u not Black don't say ngga! the fck be wrong with yall? Shame on anyone who condones the use of a slur directed to a marginalized group that isn't your own. In 2025 at that. The audacity!"
Not everyone, of course, sees the situation in black and white. One of OT's go-to partners, the rapper Sauce Walka, went on social media to ask how it made sense that people would be outraged over the purchase. In response to the uproar, and also to those comparing her comments to saying, "Black people can't eat tacos," Walka dismissed the blowback as "ignorance at its finest."
For him, however, the word has changed. In his view, it's become "a word of love, of brotherhood," no longer solely known for its dark past but redefined by how it is used and in what spirit it's done.
It's not the first time hip-hop has wrestled with this question. Fat Joe, an industry veteran, has consistently defended his use of the word by citing his upbringing in Black culture. Like OT, he knows the term's history but maintains that it's a part of his reality and vocabulary. The question persists: Is cultural proximity enough to appropriate a word that's so heavily loaded? Or should respect for its painful history be the dividing line?
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