Jadakiss and his son, Jae’won. Photos: Meron Menghistab

Father-Son Time: Jadakiss and Jae’Won Talk Rap Families, College, and Coffee

The rap legend and his oldest are on their grind — in more than one way

Paul Cantor
Published in
13 min readMar 16, 2020

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BBack in the late 1990s and early 2000s, things went very, very well for Jadakiss. Along with his rap group, The Lox, he scored consecutive deals with two of the hottest record labels in music — Bad Boy Records and Ruff Ryders Entertainment, respectively. During this brief but highly productive period, where he famously appeared on songs like “All About the Benjamins,” “24 Hrs. to Live,” and “We Gonna Make It,” he became celebrated for his raspy voice, clever bars, and super-slick flow. The man born Jason Phillips, a product of Yonkers, New York, was a generational talent, on par with the rap hit-makers and heavyweights du jour, be it Jay-Z, Nas, or DMX.

But while the music business brought him fame and, later, a fortune — over which he later battled his former label boss, Diddy — it was becoming a father to a young son that brought Jadakiss a truly special kind of joy. Today, that son, Jae’Won Phillips, is 23 years old, a recent graduate of Clark Atlanta University, where he pledged Alpha Phi Alpha and earned a degree in psychology…

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Paul Cantor
LEVEL
Writer for

Wrote for the New York Times, New York Magazine, Esquire, Rolling Stone, Vice, Fader, Vibe, XXL, MTV News, many other places.