Pitbull has given us his all for nearly three decades in the public eye. And while Mr. Worldwide puts it all on the stage during his high-energy performances and leaves little to the imagination when it comes to his love of late night assignations on songs such as “Hotel Room Service” and “I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho),” the one thing the rapper born Armando Pérez has been reticent about is discussing his family life in public.
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In his new Billboard cover story, Pit revealed why he keeps his offstage life out of the spotlight, explaining that his kids aren’t yet ready for his world and should not have to withstand the public scrutiny that comes with being an A-list music superstar.
“I love them all deeply, I’m very proud of them and I love to see kids grow, characters, what they do, how they do it, and at this point most of my ideas in music come from the kids,” he said.
Proclaiming himself the “wild card” in his kids’ life, the rapper — who keeps details about his family life private and has not to date detailed how many children he has — said he preferred not get into numbers, but did confirm that he has “a lot of kids.”
As for why he’s so private, Pitbull said that if you love something, you don’t want the world to know about it. “You protect it,” he explained. “When my kids get to a certain age, which some are, and they want to make their own decisions as far as how they want to live their life and how they want to welcome the world to it, that’s on them.”
Realizing that if he were ever to get into a “situation” that might blow back on his kids, Pitbull said he keeps things quite for that very reason. “Show me your friends and I’ll show you future. So that’s why I’m very private on what I do, so I don’t wanna put them in my world ’cause they’re not built for it yet,” he said. “It’s my responsibility as a parent to protect them. So, if I put you in my world and now you go to school and everybody’s like, ‘Oh, ’cause you’re Pitbull’s kid’ … How are you gonna ever know who’s your friend? They don’t know.”
And because his last name, Perez, is very common in Miami, Pit said he’s not worried about people sniffing out who his kids are at their school or on the street. “I protect them because I love them,” he said.
While he has kept them low-key, Pitbull said his children “love it” and “lose their mind” when they see him going hard in videos and on stage. He said the funny thing with his brood, especially the younger ones, is “you teach them in life to tell the truth … and then I have to teach them how to lie about the truth.”
So, for example, if someone asks where they live, where they go on vacation or how the get there, he’s taught them that the answer is always “no.” What about social media? Pit says that’s a no go, though “the older ones, if they want to make that decision, it’s on them.” But, if and when they screw up and post something that causes heat, “don’t call me,” he laughed.
Same with a post that goes sideways when they show something they shouldn’t have been doing, he counseled, “just get ready to own it.” That said, the self-proclaimed “variable,” the fun, wild dad said he’s the first one to say “‘hey, listen, go get in a little bit of trouble, go live a little.’”
Pitbull just dropped his 14th studio album, Pitcoin, which features collaborations with Enrique Iglesias, Lil Jon, Jason DeRulo, Zion, Akon, Bon Jovi and Ne-Yo, among others.
