Rapper Lil Jon shares heartbreaking final texts with son Nathan, 27, before he met his death in pond - and admits his painful mistake in their last days

Lil Jon has revealed the heartbreaking final text exchange he had with his son before he died – as the rapper admits he now questions whether he was 'too hard' on the 27-year-old during his struggles with anxiety and debilitating physical pain. 

In his upcoming memoir, I Only Shout So You Can Hear Me, the rapper opens up about Nathan Smith's mysterious drowning in February for the first time in extraordinary detail, revealing the private struggles his son endured in his final months and their poignant last conversations. 

Nathan, Lil Jon's only son with ex-wife Nicole Smith, was a DJ and producer who performed under the name Young Slade. 

He had been wrestling with what his father calls 'intense physical pain' that sometimes left him unable to get off the couch, according to the book that will be published October 20. 

The rapper, 55, believes Nathan's anguish was brought on by the stress and trauma he was battling – including an intense fear of releasing his own music and how it would be received. 

'There were days when the pain was so bad he wouldn't even be able to get off the couch,' writes Lil Jon, whose real name is Jonathan Smith. 

'He couldn't think. He couldn't move. And he couldn't figure how to get long term relief.'

Nathan was found dead in a pond near his family's Milton, Georgia, home on February 6 this year. His death was ruled an accident, according to an autopsy report from the Fulton County Medical Examiner.

Toxicology tests detected psilocybin, the psychoactive compound found in hallucinogenic mushrooms, in his system.

In the book, Lil Jon – born Jonathan Howard Smith – reveals his son had undergone a battery of medical tests and EMDR therapy, a treatment to help patients process traumatic experiences. 

But even as Nathan struggled to find relief, Lil Jon admits he became increasingly frustrated with his son, pushing him to take steps to get better and overcome his fears. 

Days before Nathan's disappearance, the two had a candid conversation in which Lil Jon told him: 'I'm on you because I love you. I care about you. I want you to get better.' 

Nathan replied: 'I'm getting there. I've been going through a lot. I'm working through it. Give me some credit.'

Lil Jon reveals that Nathan 'felt I was being too hard on him.'

Shortly before his death, the rapper writes, Nathan vowed to 'stop letting fear hold me back' in an emotional late-night text.

'Love you dad, got so much love for you,' he wrote in a message sent on January 31. 

'I'm gonna… stop letting fear hold me back. My love for you is stronger than my fear. And I'm a get on the supplements today,' he added. 

'I know that family bond is strong because our whole family really only argues because we care.' 

The Turn Down for What rapper replied: 'I do care a lot. You are my only son and I worry about you a lot. You are so talented and smart. Nothing should be holding you back.'

After speaking with his own therapist, Lil Jon writes, he realized that rather than 'being hard on him about what he hadn't done, I needed to acknowledge the thing he had.' 

He called Nathan again and told him: 'I see you're trying and I want you to know you are seen. All the effort you've been putting in, I see it. And I see you.' 

Tragically, it would be the last time father and son ever spoke. 

The next day, the Grammy-winning artist got the call that his son was missing.

He writes that his legs 'wobbled and my heart raced,' as he felt on the verge of collapse. 

'It was 'like someone was stabbing me in the chest with a knife, twisting more and more as time went on,' Lil Jon writes.

'I was going crazy.'

After days of searching, he recalls, he could no longer feel his son's presence.

On the afternoon of February 6, police took Lil Jon to the pond near his house and told him Nathan's body had been found. 

'I was overwhelmed with pain,' he writes. 'Nothing can prepare you for the moment your child leaves the world.'

As he grappled with the tragic events, Jon asked himself what could have happened to his son, and concluded that a lot of Nathan's pain 'stemmed from fear.' 

He writes: 'One source of his anxiety was his music. He was afraid to share it with the world, extremely self-conscious about his art.

'He seemed to constantly second-guess himself, uncertain of how his music would be received, and fearful of judgment.'

The day he disappeared, Nathan was supposed to see his therapist in the evening. Nathan's best friend also reassured Lil Jon his son was in a 'good place.'

The rapper believes 'Nathan did not intend to die.'

The book also reveals why the rapper constantly wears the sunglasses which, along with his long dreadlocks, have become his trademark look. 

At the age of six or seven, Lil Jon writes, he took a syringe that his mother used for her insulin shots and 'wanted to feel the air [from] the syringe on my eye.'

Jon says it was 'really dumb' and even today he doesn't know why he pushed the plunger down, sending the needle straight into his right eye.

His eye went black and, he writes, he had to undergo hundreds of medical appointments and five corrective surgeries – though the vision in his right eye remained like a blurry TV.

Jon writes that he had to sport a metal eye patch in school and was mocked about it.

He began to wear sunglasses because they looked good on him – and kept them on when the eye began to drift to the right.

The tragedy of Nathan's death struck at a moment when Lil Jon felt everything else in his life was finally 'coming together,' he says. 

Two years earlier he made a cameo at Usher's 2024 Super Bowl halftime show, where they performed their smash hit Yeah! 

He also became a father for the second time, as he and girlfriend Jamila Sozahdah welcomed daughter Nahara, who turns two next month. 

In deeply moving passages, the bereaved dad writes about now mourning the things he will never do with Nathan.

'I sit with myself and cry when I think that I won't see him get older. I won't see him settle down and get married.

'I won't meet the grandkids that he might have had.'

But he also claims his son Nathan follows him in 'strange forms,' citing ladybugs flying near him, as well as flickering bathroom lights.