Fat Joe: How To Be Successful After Hitting Rock Bottom & Stop Letting Failures Define You

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
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Speaker 2 (00:59):
I got shut up maybe thirty forty times in my life.
That might be scared of a gun, I might be
scared of a bazooka, But men, I've never been afraid
of men. I'm afraid of fly, so you know every
day I fly. I'm like.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
We got a special guest in the building, the icon
living Fat Joe.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
Would be had to see where we were going to
put the money at. My other brother turned around and
told my brother, why are we even talking in front
of Joey. He's a half brother, and that devastated me.

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(01:50):
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Speaker 2 (02:04):
The number one health and wellness podcast.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Jay Sheetty Jay Shetty Len shet Hey everyone, welcome back
to On the Purpose, the place you come to become happier, healthier,
and more healed. Today's guest is someone I've been listening
to since I was a kid, very very grateful to
have on the show, the one the only someone who
needs no introduction. Fat Joe, Joe, Welcome to on Purpose.

(02:29):
I'm grateful that.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
You're here A long time coming out.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
I know there's been a long term coming. We did
a short get together connection.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
We always knew we was going to do this sooner
or later. But it's honor to be here.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
No, I'm very grateful to have you here. Honestly, I
grew up listening to you. I was listening to you
this morning getting ready for the show, just to prepare
my mindset.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
And that's a different Fat Joe, Fat Joe, twenty twenty four.
Sometimes I listen to my music, I'm like, yo, I
can't even believe, like it was really Yeah, it was
a different time.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
What what what's your earliest childhood memory that has defined
who you are today?

Speaker 2 (03:11):
Wow? Just uh, always being charismatic, always being you know,
from the class clown to people always loved me. I
always told great stories and and so when you're growing
up in hip hop, you know, we used to always
have this like mean bravado, nobody talked to nobody, everybody right,

(03:35):
And so recently I started telling stories in the last
couple of years and everybody's like, yo, why it's a
great storyteller. But I always was this person. But unfortunately
hip hop, what have you put on this facade to
where you can't even show people your true personality? So
I think that's what I that's what I think coincides

(03:58):
is just I've always been this person since I was
a kid, and the world's just getting there is getting
revealed to the world.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
Yeah, why do you think that is? Why did why
did you have to hide yourself? What was the reason
for me?

Speaker 2 (04:09):
This hip hop was just really tough. Man. When I
grew up, it was you know, we lost Biggie, we
lost pot you know, uh, you were punk. If you
had security, like you know, they wanted to see you
go through it. Unfortunately, there was a big uh stigma
and hip hop like if you didn't live it, then

(04:30):
we didn't We didn't respect you. And so you had
to live this thing out. And the last thing you
want to show people is that you're cool, funny dude
that gets along with everybody, actually loves everybody. So you
you had to keep that tucked away just for your uh,
your family and your friends.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
But even when you were younger, you were bullied, right,
You went through bullying, and then I believe there were
even and.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
I became a bully. So it's it's like, uh, you
become a product of the product. And so you know,
when I was young, I was getting bullied because you know,
I've never been a punk. I've never been you know.
So twenty guys confronted me. I fight all twenty of them.
They beat, They'll beat the crap out of me. But
I always was that.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
What were they bullying you for? At that time? Man?

Speaker 2 (05:14):
It was it was just too much. Like So, I
grew up in the ninety percent black neighborhood. So the
way they explain this to you is the only thing
not black about me is my skin color. So my
family were there forty years before me. So when they
brought me home, it was like that was Joey. And

(05:34):
so I grew up at that neighborhood my whole life,
and so you know, that's how I grew up. And
then I went to my grandmother's neighborhood. It's like ninety
nine percent black. But they never seen a Latino like that,
looking like the Beatles with blonde hair and green eyes
and acting like and saying, you know, just coming like

(05:55):
that was a problem, Like they had a real problem
with that over there. They were like, yo, we're not
going for that over here. But I am who I am.
So I've always been me. I've always been true to
who I am. So I had a lot of problems,
you know. And so you know bullies, you know, when
one gets away with it, you know, then then another
guy tries it. It's not necessarily that they're tough. It's

(06:19):
just to say, oh, they beat them up, Oh we
could beat them up, and then you know, you're just
the guy they beat up. And I kept telling them
I'm not a punk. I kept telling them every time
they beat me up. I was like, Yo, I'm not
a punk. I'm letting y'all know. Y'all just got the
numbers right now, you know. And so I used to
get beat up for a lot of things. I used
to lie a lot when I was a kid. So

(06:39):
I would say stuff like yo, I was with that girl.
Her brother would come with five guys and be like,
oh you with my sister? Beat me up. So I remember,
I had a time I had to look in the
mirror when I was teenager and just be like, yo,
you lie a lot. Oh you got to stop, like
you got to you gotta keep it real because you

(06:59):
get beat up because of this. So you know, life journey,
it's a journey. This this the journey. Everything leads to
the next chapter in life.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
Yeah, it's amazing wherever you grow up, just how much
bullying is the norm for kids. Like even where I
grew up, I was bullied for the color of my
skin because there weren't that many Indian people in the
area that I grew up in. And I was bullied
for my weight because I was overweight growing up, so
I was bullied for that. It's amazing how like kids
find a way to make other kids life hell. Even

(07:30):
though we heard.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
What's crazy is not criticizing the youth of today. But
when I see stuff like bullying and they you know,
kids kill themselves and because they're getting body shamed or whatever,
I just don't understand, Like, do you know what levels
of bullying I've been through? And I never once thought
of killing myself, never once, you know, I just knew

(07:53):
it was something we had to work our way through.
And so you know, I don't think there's never a
time where you kill yourself. You know, I don't think
there's never a time where you just say, yo, I
want to kill myself. I don't know how that comes about.
And so you know we're bullying. It was. You know,
we've been getting bullied in the house, you know, from

(08:15):
my father, from my family, from me. You know, we've
been dealing with a lot of uh pressure and trauma.
And you know, you know your father comes only lost
all his money gambling drinking. He's gonna treat you like
shit that day, you know what I'm saying. So but
we don't know that, and so we had to work
through all that. We have to learn all that. So
now when I see uh my kids or other people's

(08:39):
kids complaining about something, you know, I got beat up
by twenty guys every single day for two years straight,
so you know, and I never once went home and
told my mother I can't do it, you know, so
I don't. I don't.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
Why do you think that is? Why do you think
that you had that tough skin, that resilience.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
Now it was hard, well it was hard, but you
but you know something you had to deal with. You know,
you have to go to school the next day, you
had to go outside the next day. You have to
like this where you at. You're in this environment, You're
either going to be predator or prey. And so you know,
I was always the loving, nice person I am. And

(09:18):
then you know, my skin got thick. Then I was like,
all right, I'm gonna be the the tough guy. I'm
gonna be the bully. I'm gonna show them I'm not
gonna care. And then things changed, and thankfully hip hop
came and saved my life.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
You said you had to in those early days make
some life and death choices.

Speaker 2 (09:40):
Now I got shot at maybe thirty forty times in
my life, and I know somebody like you or some
of my friends, they can't even understand that, no for sure.
And so you know, I tell people these stories now
and now they think I'm just lying. I just make
it up. But the truth is the truth. And so
you could imagine I was one of the toughest kids
in the neighborhood. I was always into something, and I

(10:03):
was very aggressive of getting money. You know, I'm very
aggressive of getting money. I was in six states this
week alone, So I'm like, you know, I've been like
that since I was a kid. So you know, once
in any neighborhood. You know, if you hear about dangerous places,
it always has to do with money, or with drugs

(10:27):
or with you know, and so that's why you say,
you say, yo, that place is so safe. Yeah, but
you know they killing people? Why the drug game to this?
To that? So I've always was aggressive, you know, and
once you show people you want money and you want
you want bigger things and you're willing to do whatever for,
it becomes more dangerous.

Speaker 1 (10:49):
You know, what were you doing for money at that time?

Speaker 2 (10:52):
Well? I was hustling, you know, I was. I was
really I was no different than the movies. You see,
like I was a guy. They were hired to go
beat people up. Like that's how I started in the game.
And so it'd be like, yo, Joe.

Speaker 1 (11:06):
How did they recruit you for something? Like what?

Speaker 2 (11:08):
I know that these guys are bad guys and you
could pick them up. So you're drug kingpin. You're not
necessarily tough like that. But you know, Fat Joey and them,
they get busy no matter what. And so you know,
you coming, you say, you're Fat Joey. You've got three
pair of sneakers for you, you know, a jacket, you know,
I need you go beat my competition up. So I

(11:31):
would just jump out of van and you know, and
just you know, apply to pressure.

Speaker 1 (11:36):
Were scared.

Speaker 2 (11:37):
No, that's one thing God never made me. Was scared
of men. Right. I might be scared of a gun,
I might be scared of a bazooka, but men, I've
never been afraid of men, you know, physically, whether it
was one twenty thirty forty or just never been afraid
of men, you know, of violence or physical you know.

(12:00):
Yet and still I ain't get grabbed by the cartel
or some ship like that. You know, that's it. But
I've never been afraid of men. You know what I'm saying.
I'm afraid of fly. So you know, every day I fly,
I'm like, I'm the big I'm grabbing the old lady
next to me. You know, I'm the guy I take
all three air conditions. When when when I'm flying, I
grab all the three and I got it on me

(12:22):
and I'm breathing. I'm doing breathing exercises. You know, I'm
terrified of flying. And I fly all the time. And
I just tell God, I said, God, thank you for
letting me face my fear. You know what I mean
because I'm able to. You know, I don't think if
I flew, I would be uh as successful as I
am so and I love going places I love. I

(12:45):
would love to go to India, Africa. This this that
it just don't like the journey, the plane flight once
this is it still still every day every every I fly,
maybe every other day, and it could be the beg.
I remember one time I get on the flight with
Kalid and Calid got this plane, like you know, cald

(13:09):
does everything another level, you know, so his private plane
that was white, everything, the ceiling, the floors, the coucius,
the ladies, the flight attendants. They were so polite. It
was there was the best flight you could ever take.
We went up, we felt a little. I was like
it could have been it could have been American Airlines,

(13:29):
it could have been any other plane. I was like,
all the white, all the fancy food, everything went out
the window. I was like terrified and something I can't get.

Speaker 1 (13:39):
Over with going back to that time that you're they're
giving you a jacket, they giving you three pairs of
sneakers and go and take care of this. How long
does that continue for a man?

Speaker 2 (13:49):
That continues because I was, uh, we were really tough.
I won't say just me, but we're really tough. And
but I, like I said, I you know, when I
grew up in the Bronx, it looked like bombs exploded
in the Bronx. It looked like Ukraine, no exaggeration, look
it up, seventies eighties in the Bronx. And so, but

(14:12):
I always had a ambition to be successful, to have
more on I remember talking to a friend of mine,
his name was Louis. We was like twelve years old
and I'm looking out that rubble and I'm saying, Yo,
I'm not this ain't for me. I gotta get money.
I gotta, I gotta. I gotta give me a Mercedes Benz,

(14:32):
I gotta give me a DA And he's like, what
are you talking about? We've been so poor generational that
he couldn't even fathom. You know, nobody in my family
was rich like that or nothing like that. So he
was like, what are you talking about? We straight this.
I was like, nah, I gotta get it, you know.
And and so it's almost like a movie that you know,

(14:53):
you got these guys that you know, you just come
pick up when it's time. And so I would go.
And you know, for me, it was by any means
necessary to get money, and so I would do whatever,
but also knowing I want to be the kingpin, not
the guy they come get to beat people up. And
so one thing led to another and and you know,

(15:17):
we became big boys in the street, you know before
a rap. So hip hop saved my life, you know,
changed my whole life like a Cinderella movie. Like it
was like the minute I got my record deal, I
never hustled again. I never dealt with crime, I never
went back there. It was like a Cinderella Robin Hood.
The minute that I got my deal, I was like, y'all,

(15:38):
I don't want nothing to do with this. I walked
away from it, started rapping, telling my story through music,
and here we are. You know, I just knew when
I got into hip hop and I got into the
rap game, I said, all right, this is it, this
is this, this is the way out. And you know,

(15:59):
no difference and any other business. You know, at one
time I had the number one record Flow Joe in
nineteen ninety three. It was it was the number one
record in the country. I was getting five hundred dollars
a show. So I was doing three shows at night.
Do you know, you know, that wasn't no money, you
know what I'm saying. But I had to do what
I had to do to get my money, and so

(16:20):
you know, so that wasn't even easy. So you now
you in the game and you step in and it's
almost like half the battle. And I was like, Yo,
how do we find the money in this business? Because
at that time, it was no money in the business.

Speaker 1 (16:35):
Yeah, yeah, that's I mean, yeah, that's crazy to think
that in what thirty years, it's changed so much financially.

Speaker 2 (16:42):
I think I don't want to say for a fact,
but I think LOOKUJ was headlining arenas for like ten
thousand a show. Wow, and this is Arenas, this is
like Madison Square Garden and all that. So it was like,
you know, it was the money wasn't there, So you know,
back in the day is the only way to explain

(17:04):
it to you. Back in the days, Magic Johnson was
the first player to get a million dollars a year.
He made the cover of Times magazine, he was in
every matter. It was the biggest talk. Now you got
the fifteenth guy on the bench making two hundred and
forty million. The disparity is crazy. You see a rapper
now or reggaetne artists or one of them now put

(17:24):
out one hit and they're making four hundred thousand the
show for one song, and you're like, Yo, this is
craz I done, tore it. Forget a chitlin circuit. I
don't went around the whole moon for five hundred dollars,
you know, So you know it's a different time.

Speaker 1 (17:43):
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(18:07):
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was going back to your movie analogy I feel like

(18:28):
in the movie the streets always trying and come back
for the person to try to move away. So when
someone goes, I come done with this business. Now I'm
going to a shadow. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:37):
And so with my life it was like that too,
and I and I and I made a lot of mistakes.
You know, I'm more successful now than ever, but that's
because I'm much more mature and so, you know, growing
up in the ghetto, you have survivors guilt, and so
me and my community, you know, took care me. The
only reason why I'm still here is because of them.

(18:59):
So I had a big obligation to try to bring
everybody with me. You know, I got rich young, and
I would have fifty guys with me every time. I
would literally come to your interview right now with fifty guys,
fifty trucks, fifty cars. That means fifty stakes, fifty champagne bottles,
fifty hotel rooms, fifty plane tickets. This you know, every day,

(19:23):
how do you afford that you don't? And so what
happens is, uh, you know, when you when you're young,
if you look at the cartoons, they're telling kids a
million dollars. That's almost like you could capture a cloud, right,
like like a million dollars is like you could take
a cloud and put it in a bottle a million dollars,

(19:44):
and then when you get a million dollarge, you think
it's like this can't run out, but it runs out.
And so for me, I remember going broke about three
times in my life, like literally broke, being like a
number one rapper, number one on the head. Everybody's what,
but I'm like, and I'm just doing foolish things and
I'm just trying to take the whole neighborhood with me.

(20:07):
And I remember that one time I tell this famous story,
but I'll tell it to your audience. I remember one
time I couldn't sleep, and now I know when I
can't sleep, God has given me a message. So that's
that's a fact. Like that that that when I I
could sleep all the time, right, but when I can't sleep,
there's something that I gotta figure out, dissect or whatever

(20:31):
God is telling me. Yo, hold up, figure this out,
you know, because us, you know, we in the public life,
we gotta watch what we say. We gotta do. You know,
it's a very you know, I don't get high, I
don't use I don't. Everybody, I encourage you to smoke weed.
If you want cannabis, you could drink whatever. I don't.
And in my life, with everything that's been thrown at me,

(20:55):
it's almost like the matrix. If I got high, i'd
have been out of here a long time ago. Did it?
No Wow. So the way this thing comes to me
is like, you know, he throw so much things at you,
whether it's family, whether it's business, whether it's this, whether
it's that, it's this. To be successful in twenty twenty
four is like the matrix. You know you're doing this.

(21:17):
It's like who dodged that one? What about this one?
What about that? Magine I'm high, I'm over here like
this doped up? I'm done right? And so that was
back in the early days. The reason why I never
got high was because I had so much violence and
beef whatever guys that you know, I just I knew

(21:37):
they were gonna kill me or some like if I
was standing on the corner hin smoked out or something.
I was done. And the thing is, nobody has a
PhD or masters in hip hop music. It's actually whose
crew is toughest. So every rapper you meet, they'll come
up and be like, Yo, Hi, let's just say I'm

(21:58):
fabulous yo. This my man just came on for twenty years.
He did three murder this this to' oh how you
doing yo? This is Jada kiss yo? What's up? Jadakiss yo?
This is my man Johnny the button just came on
for twenty five years for killing five people. This thing,
I mean, that's what it is. And so I don't
get we gotta do it with Drake. We could do

(22:20):
it with all of them, right, and so you don't
need a PhD on Masters to get a hip hop.
So I'm leaving the streets trying to come in here
to change my life. And then when I come in
here to change my life, I realize the streets come back,
the shadows, you know, And then everybody want to know,

(22:41):
are you really tough? Are you really that guy? Fat Joe?
Do you talk loud? Do you just like prove to
us that you really get busy? And so the streets
is always with you, you know. Now it's more like you know,
now we totally you know, talk to my secure to
argue with my security. He's an ex cop, deal with him. Oh,

(23:05):
I don't even I don't even stuff doesn't even bother
me no more. So you got to get to that
place spiritually. You got to get to that place where
you feel like, you know what your job is in life,
you know what you're trying to do. You want to
live righteous, you want to help the people, you want
to help your family. But all that outside noise doesn't

(23:27):
even bother me no more. You know. I've had some
of my friends that I have for years go on
youtubes and blogs and talk bad about me and this
and this. I'd be like, oh, him too, Like it's
like it just it just rubs off me. Now it's
not doesn't even affect me.

Speaker 1 (23:45):
Yeah, when you were younger, one of the things that
did affect you, I believe was your oh, brother, you're
realizing that you weren't biologically family.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
No, it wasn't my problem. It was like we grew
up together. So I have two brothers and the sister,
and I grew up my father came from Cuba, and
my father got with my my mom's after she had
a husband and had three kids. So I'm the last kid.
But he raised my brothers and sisters, and we were

(24:15):
raised as brothers and sisters to this day. Brother, not half.
We never heard the word half. We had a brother.
So me and my brother, we were, you know, partners
in the streets, right, So you know, me and my
brother and you. And then my other brother, Raymond, was
supposed to be a lawyer or whatever the case may be.

(24:35):
He was going to school for that. And then when
we was hustling, we had a choice to make right.
And so the choice to make was that we had
made all this money, we still lived in the projects, Like,
we had tons of money in the closet right in
the in afforded affordable housing projects. So we had to

(24:56):
see where we were going to put the money at.
Wasn't that small? An't we was sophisticated. We didn't know
about buying businesses. We didn't have accountants, We ain't have nothing.
The most we had was cars and jury and and
so my one brother said, y'all leave the money with me.
And I said, and I ain't think nothing of he's
my brother. I told my brother Andre, I said, why

(25:18):
don't we leave half the money with him? And you
go to Orlando to my aunt who's like ninety years old.
She wouldn't even know she had millions of dollars in
her attic right, and I said, split it up. You know,
you don't want all your eggs not saying it this.
And so my brother, my other brother, turned around and
told my brother, why are we even talking in front

(25:40):
of Joey? He's our half brother. And that devastated me
that the tears just can't. I never heard that before.
So my brother Andrew argue with him, was like, you're crazy.
Joey's my brother. You know. The irony to that story
is that day, it was Thanksgiving the whole family. You know,
we never had much or whatever, but we always have
was love and family to this day. So I got

(26:04):
in the car. I had a Mustang five point on
at that time, I went to h it'send the book Jose.
I went to a place in the bronx Court City
Island to it. It's one way in, one way out,
and so I was just driving like one hundred miles
per hour, and I was I just felt like I
was going to run into a wall or something. And
then at the last minute, you know, I spun out.

(26:27):
I was actually thinking the killing myself. I spun out,
you know, except that then I went and ate me
a nice steak. You ever ate at the Seville Rich
there was a Oh my god, they had the best
steaks with the fast onions. Now I had the best
meal that night, right old school joint man. And so

(26:49):
eventually I wrote it in the book, but didn't really
actually say it that my brother the FEDS came and
locked everybody up, like forty of us, not me. I
was rapping the ready. Thank god, rap saved my life.
But when they did that, my brother was on the runner.
He was calling my other brother, YO, send me money.
He was in like Dominican Republican and my brother went

(27:10):
and respond. So my brother flies back and the brother
who called me to have brother spent the millions of
dollars we didn't know. So he came and said, Yo,
what's up. I'm on the run. I need the money.
And he's like, yo, I spent the money. We like
you spent the money millions of dollars. Like you spent
the money. And it wasn't like lavish. You ain't see no
Lamborghinea out there or nothing like. It's like how you

(27:32):
spent the money. And so the concept of us growing
up was always if my brother had it, I had it.
So my brother was the boss. I made some dollars,
but he made the real money. But I knew if
my brother had it, I had it. It's the same
concept we have with terror Squad today. If Joe got it,

(27:53):
you got it. You can't take advantage of it. Well,
he'll help you at any given time. You know, if
I got it, you got it. And so my brother
stole the money. I never talked to him for twenty
five thirty years. I never talked to him again because
my brother not only did he steal the money, my
other brother, ain't you started using drugs because he went

(28:15):
from being rich to being broke. And I used to
tell them all the time, your age, I'm rapping, I'm
gonna take care of us. Don't worry. I got us.
But he just fell in deep depression and started using
drugs and using drugs. And you know, to this day,
my brother he'll be looking around the room and he
was like, I used to have money. I used to
have it. You know, these people kill themselves in Wall Street.

(28:37):
They jump off the roof, they jump off of bridges,
they hang themselves when they lose all their money. When
you used to that type of money, millions of dollars,
you know, your own brother, your own blood steals that
from you. So he had a lot to deal with
and I kept putting them in drug programs. I kept
begging them like, June, come on, I'm good, Like, come on,

(28:58):
you know, we're gonna be good. But he couldn't get
over that. Even to this day. But he's not using
drugs no more, thank God. But you know, if I
had him, you know, mind sound. You know, he's smarter
than me. So if I had him with me through
my whole career, through my whole you know, we would
have been better off than we are now, you know,

(29:18):
because he was really the leader, he was really the
smart one and so but he couldn't snap himself out
of that.

Speaker 1 (29:24):
Yeah, how hard is that watching someone you love, someone
that you try, someone that you know could have been
this and had this potential, and then not seeing them
be there with you through it? Well, how do you
deal with that?

Speaker 2 (29:37):
Well, you know, my best friend on earth is in jail.
He's doing forty eight years and he's been in jail
for thirty three years. And I often think about, like tonight,
I'm gonna nick game. I know for a fact they're
gonna put me on TV. God bless him on court side,
sitting next to Spike Lee High five and Spike Lee.
My brother got to see that in jail and the Feds.

(29:58):
But how do you think he feel that he's in
jail my best friend, and he knows that if he
comes out, Fat Joe got him. He's right here with
Jay Shetty. He's driving the best car, he's living the
best life. That's what you call suffering when you can't
do nothing for it. And the same thing with my brother.
You know what, you know, my brother had a chance,
you know. And so what I can tell you is

(30:19):
that drugs is an illness. It's highly addictive. That's why
I never tried it, because I might like it, And
so that's why I've always stayed away from drugs. I
looked at my brother and said, damn man, he's smarter
than me. He could have been way more than me.
And you know he couldn't shake the drugs. I don't

(30:40):
even want to try that. You know I had. I'll
tell you a story for your audience. I had a
girl I used to chase for maybe ten years. I
used to chase this girl, Hey, what's up yo, yo?
Beautiful girl? Right? And one day. She said, tonight's your
night and I said, oh, wow, really I'm going to

(31:00):
get it. Like you know y'all've been after even Yes, yes,
but you know, Joe, I know you don't use drugs,
but tonight, to make it special, we're gonna take these
pills together. And I said, huh. She was like, we're
gonna take this choir. I said, I'm not taking them pills.
She was like, no, but this is gonna be amazing.
This is that you don't understand sex with these pills,
I said. And I was after this girl, and I

(31:22):
was like, you ain't getting me to take the pills.
And so nothing happened. Nothing happened.

Speaker 1 (31:29):
Brother, she must have felt that rejection.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
I don't care about rejection. It's just I know, you
know too many stories.

Speaker 1 (31:36):
You know.

Speaker 2 (31:36):
Uh, good friend of mine not to put his business
out there, but he talks about it. Scott Storch one
of the most talented people in the world. Like I
owe him a lot of my career to Scott Storch.
But he tried at one time and that was it. Wow,
he tried. He was with two girls, real famous girls.

(31:57):
If you know the real story. The best, the best
movie ever made that hasn't been made as the Scott's
short story. If he lays the goods out is, you know,
we need Leonardo DiCaprio to play him like this, this
is gonna be one. But you know, he had two
famous girls and they were like, yo, you want to
be with us, you got to sniff this cocaine off

(32:18):
of you know, And he did it. He said that.
He literally told me the minute he sniffed it, he
was like euphoria, like this is the game, you know,
this whole life up messing with that. Now he's doing better,
but uh, you know he ran through like ninety million
dollars getting high.

Speaker 1 (32:36):
You know, well, yeah, because he was the guy then.
I remember he was producing for everyone.

Speaker 2 (32:39):
Yeah, like eighty five percent and number one songs of
one year, Yeah, Beyonce, fat Yo fifty, he was Sean Paul,
This everything was him, yeah remember, and so, uh, you
know he took a hard fall. You know, I love
Scott Man. I wouldn't be where I'm at if it
wasn't for Scott.

Speaker 1 (32:56):
Yeah, no, it's and and that's the hard part, right.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
That's right with him. I try to get jokes. Oh yeah,
I'm you know in many places. I'm considered the fun killer,
you know, because I were coming they can't get high.
Scott Storch, I'll tell you he used to sniff kilos
of cocaine, but around me, he never sniffed cocain his life.
He had that level of respect. So I would go

(33:19):
to his I would go there every day and just
sit there like a thrown on his side, you know,
for months, and just be like, you know, making sure
he don't get high. They said the minute I walked
out the door, and they were like, bring it out right.
They hated me in the place, but you know, I tried.

Speaker 1 (33:36):
You know well, I mean we're talking about losing people
while they're still alive, and that is a real loss.
And then you've lost people who have actually lost their life,
who are no longer here. You've lost three, I mean,
I'm sure you've lost more than this, but three very
significant people in your life. Can you tell us what
was significant about the loss of each, because I feel

(33:59):
like they're different, diferent types of losses, but they're all
in the same year.

Speaker 2 (34:02):
First of all, the same like week, like yeah, two
three weeks apart. Everything. I start with my sister. My
sister was like my best friend. She was supposed to
be the one to be there for me. You know,
we love our wives and we want them to always

(34:24):
be there. But one person I do know, you know, O. J.
Simpson died, you know recently, and they said the only
people who used to go see them every day was
his sisters. You know, that's the you know, when the
whole world turns off the lights on you, your sisters
would be there for you. So I lost to I
lost my sister. She was giving childbirth and so they

(34:46):
gave an epidoro instead of numbing up from the waist
down and number from the waist up. Lack of oxygen
to the brain. So she was in a coma for
eight months, and that was killing me to see my
mother and father every day there and he was there,
and that's horrible. I wish nobody gets to see someone
they loved like that. And when I got the call

(35:08):
she died, it was almost a relief. And I don't
want to say I'm happy my sister died, because that's
not true. But she was suffering too much. And so
my sister passes away, right, So that's the number one. Right.
I used to think this guy was the number one
because I love him so much. But really, over the years,
really analyzing it, my sister really knocked me out the

(35:30):
box right, just to not have her in this world.
Then one of my best friends, you know, my artists,
when you know, one of the most loyal guys is
Big Pun. You know, we made history together and together,
you know, being Latino in this music business, you know
that we stood for so much, you know, and even

(35:51):
though I was on before him and I was on
my way to success, I took the back road for
him because I knew he was so much more talented
and I knew we need a guy like that. Years later,
now thirty twenty years later, we still hear his music
and feel that pride. I knew that at the time,
and so he passed away young around the same time
as my sister, maybe a week two weeks apart. Now

(36:14):
I'm young, I'm twenty seven, twenty eight, acting like I
know about the world, but I'm still really really young,
and so you know how scared it is to lose
a best friend, franchise player. You know, here you went
from being this broke kid living in this danger zone
into you know, being successful, being rich, and now the

(36:36):
guy you did it with his dad at twenty seven,
twenty eight years old. And then my grandfather, you know,
and I analyzing my family treat I'm more like my
grandfather than anybody, you know. I used to call him Cowboy.
He had a lot of respect in the hood. So
my grandfather died, so all that together just through it

(36:56):
was like a perfect storm, you know. And I never
dealt with so much death like that, And so, you know,
I was really in a dark place. I'm not talking
about a regular dark place, you know, sleeping in the
bathtub with no water running. If I looked outside and
there was sunny, it looked dark. You know, if someone
shoots you. I tell people all the time, you in

(37:20):
a gang. Tell you in a gang in Chicago and
they're trying to kill you. You do know, you can
move to Alabama and no one will know you. You
couldn't move to la You could move to New York.
You could move anywhere and they won't know you. The
problem with depression is it comes with you wherever you go.

(37:41):
So at the time I'm in depression, I'm going to Miami,
I'm going to Islands. I'm going to try to erase it.
But I can't. It's with me everywhere I go. And now,
you know, when people say let them mourn, that means
like give them time, let them get their things together,
their bearings together. But when your best friend who just

(38:03):
died is the biggest rap star in the world, people
think they're doing a good thing, a good deed. So
they bring you your food. Yoh, sorry about your brother,
big pun man, Yo, that was my man once again.
It's back. Yeah. And then I'm in the car. I'm
in a car waiting at the light. The next door,
y'all pun he was the man they started blasting. So

(38:25):
it was so hard, right, and I considered it myself
to be a bright person. And so it's the only
way to put it is like the mind is like
a super complex Rubik's Q, and you just gotta And
so I never thought of I'm gonna kill myself this.
I just was like, Joe, you gotta get out of this.
You gotta get out of this. It's like a funk

(38:48):
and you wake up and it's a new day. Instead
of just saying it's a new day, you know, you
go back to oh, you know this, and then it's
so I went to therapy is.

Speaker 1 (38:58):
That the first time you started going to say that's.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
The only time I went to therapy. But I went
to therapy for like two years. I didn't tell nobody,
and this lady, this woman really really helped me out.
And her strategy, I guess therapists are all different. Her
strategy is you figure it out for you, like you'll
tell me about you, and then you just go there

(39:22):
all the time and you tell her about you, and
then you figure it out. You'll figure out what happened.
And the one thing that happened to me was, Uh,
we would do this muror in the South Bronx for
Big Punt. So you know, I started out a graffiti
artist and shout out the tax crew. So every year
they were doing new they would change the mural for

(39:43):
punt rest in peace punt. So I'm out there, it's
two years has gone by. Two dudes walk by. I
always say, I owe these guys so much money. And
one dude was like, yo, what they doing. He wasn't
from the neighborhood. He was like, oh, that's a big
pun boy. They changed it every year, he said, they
change it every year. It's been that long. He was like, yeah,
it's been two years, and I swear to God in
my brain all I heard was two years, two years,

(40:06):
two years, two years, two years, two years. And then
something in my mind told myself, like your joke, you've
been beating yourself up for two years. You got to
snap out of it. That same night, boom, I was
back to the way I am. Now.

Speaker 1 (40:22):
Wow, you know, just.

Speaker 2 (40:24):
Two years, Joe, you try to kill yourself. For two years,
you've been beating yourself up. Maybe you could have did so,
maybe he could have lost weight, Maybe you could have
helped your sister. Maybe you could have you know, And
so you go over beating yourself up. So you know,
it's finally was done. Two years and I run away
from dark thoughts and depression. Like now, I don't even

(40:47):
get in the area. If I ever feel something like that,
I'm running the other way. See people walk to it
for some reason, you know, But me, I run away
from from any type of dark times, any type of
dark moments. I move on.

Speaker 1 (41:02):
Your sister, if she could talk to you today, what
do you think she'd say?

Speaker 2 (41:04):
She'd be proud, but she also was very supportive and simple.
But you know she you know, she knew her brother
had a bat. She'd call me anytime or the day,
anytime or the day. You know, bro, I need money,

(41:25):
that car be outside. I windn'tow in five minutes, Like, yo,
come down here you go, you know what I'm saying.
So she know I always had a bat, you know,
she she the only thing I would say. The only
regret my sister had with me is I used to
beat up her boyfriends. And so that was like a
major problem. Like for real though, if a guy came

(41:48):
to visit my sister, I would sitting there with a
baseball bat while he's sitting on the couch with her
and I'm looking at him.

Speaker 1 (41:53):
And she always hated me for that.

Speaker 2 (41:56):
You know. You know, I'm just telling you what she
you know, she wasn't feeling me on that tip. I'd
be like, you know, yo, you ain't gonna do that
to my sister.

Speaker 1 (42:06):
And so, you know, is that your younger sister? She
was old, she was.

Speaker 2 (42:10):
Older, but I was always you know, I'm young, but
you know I'm the the baby of the family, say,
but always the leader. I don't know, It's just that
was me.

Speaker 1 (42:19):
I have a younger sister. I'm very protective as well,
and I could I could relate to what you were
saying about the love that you have for your sister.

Speaker 2 (42:26):
That kind of different. Yes, the brother sister love is
a whole different because she really got your back. Yeah, no, no,
she got your back.

Speaker 1 (42:36):
I can do nothing wrong in my sister's eyes.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
Yeah, she got your back. So when it's all said
and done, you know, God forbid. Hopefully you live with
your wife till you die together. But if you know,
you ever go through something with your wife or something
like that, the one woman that is going to hold
you down is your sister.

Speaker 1 (42:53):
And what about Big Pun? If he was.

Speaker 2 (42:57):
I don't know, you know Big Pun, and you know
he was so good, like he was like he was
like a freaking nature bro. He was a genius, you know.
So I don't know. I know, I try to impress
him with moves I'm making musically. You know, I've always
been a real man. I always been a lawyer man.

(43:19):
I always stuck to the code no matter what, you know,
I never let the you know, Punk has this famous
line in the record where he says, you know, I
never I weigh the crown and never let it touch
the ground. So we never let the crown touch the ground.
You know, we always kept that same you know, you know,
but uh, I can't tell you because he was so

(43:42):
much better than me. He was just like light years
better than me. So he really actually taught me how
to make hits. Even though I discovered him. We would
sitting there, so he would screaming at me like, yo,
you're limited, you're limited, keep thinking. Switch it up at
the end. This like he was just so great that
you know, he's like it was like I'm coming up

(44:03):
and he's a Shakespeare or something like he was literally
and he would be like, no, you got to do
it like this, No, like that. So I don't know,
you know, I've had some an thumbs, I've had hits.
I don't know if it was too big pun standards.
I'm telling you he was. He was. He was sleep.

Speaker 1 (44:19):
Yeah, he had that thing.

Speaker 2 (44:22):
What is in KNARCOLEPSI or something, right, He would fall
asleep right on you. Right, there's a true story. He
would wake up and be like aass me the book.
He would have a whole song. He would write it
in his sleep. He would have a whole song to
start writing it. Yeah right, I mean this guy was.

(44:43):
It was phenomenal from the first time I ever heard
of my new Like, this guy's like the greatest, he's
the best, Like it was another level.

Speaker 1 (44:51):
Yeah, yeah, well you it was. I remember when we
were coming up listening to you. It was because of
you that we got introduced to Big Pun. That's how
we Yeah, he was like, yeah, is that we even
discovered who he was because we were aware I was.

Speaker 2 (45:03):
A big punt in London. He was on fire out there.

Speaker 1 (45:06):
Because of you.

Speaker 2 (45:07):
Yeah. Yeah, I know.

Speaker 1 (45:08):
That was the entry point for all of us that
that's how we discovered his music. But it was for
the people who were like listening, like it was for
a real listener. Yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't for the
master lyrics.

Speaker 2 (45:18):
Yeh.

Speaker 1 (45:18):
Yeah, It's for someone who was actually listening and was
trying to understand that.

Speaker 2 (45:22):
You know, beautiful time. I think my best time at
in hip hop music, you know what I mean, just
growing together, becoming the first UH soloist Latino to win
UH to sell two million records back in them days.
You know, you have to go buy them records in
the snowstorm. You know, it was physical, it wasn't just streaming,

(45:43):
and so we were so proud of him and and
you know, he died so young. So that was that
that really devastated me to this day. You know, the
way the crew works is, uh, he's everywhere. So if
you go in my house, you see Big Punt. You
going my businesses, you see Big Pun. You go in
any one of the crew members' houses, Big Pun is up.

(46:06):
You know we we we never forgot them. You know
what's crazy is I throw this up. I'm gonna invite
you this year. I throw a birthday party every year
at forget about it. Whoever you think of is in
there right every year. We have fun. So if you
don't dance, you're not invited. We are, but you gotta dance, brother,

(46:27):
that's gotta dance. It's so and so one year a
reporter snuck in the party. We didn't even know. And
so the reporter wrote for the for the post, I believe,
she wrote, I was in the party. It was amazing.
This one and that one was there. This she said.
They kept mentioning Big Pun every thirty seconds, like he

(46:49):
was alive at the party. And so I think you
would be proud of that that we make sure that
you know, we represent them at the highest standard. Yeah,
you know, as a rap guard because that's what he is.

Speaker 1 (47:02):
That's beautiful. And I'm waiting for my Terrot Squad chain
as well, and the two things I wanted as a kid.

Speaker 2 (47:08):
That's an expensive that's an expensive everybody. Everybody was waiting
on that Terrace Squad train.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
You know you you made us one of his kids.
That's just deal.

Speaker 3 (47:19):
You know.

Speaker 2 (47:19):
I remember one day I had to give my chain
the drake off my neck like I had it on
my neck, and he was like, yo, man, I always
wanted that. You know, this is I was like, man,
here you go, but that's expensive.

Speaker 1 (47:30):
That's a heavy thing to give.

Speaker 2 (47:32):
Oh that's expensive. Just uh, you know everybody. You imagine
how rich everybody wants a Terrace Squad chain.

Speaker 1 (47:39):
We used to go get the cubics of CONEA one
and down the road DJ Cubics and.

Speaker 2 (47:45):
People I really love it. They'd be like, yo, I
need that chain. I'm like, sheesh, man, you know what
these change costs?

Speaker 1 (47:52):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (47:53):
Yeah, but it's beautiful, man, have some you know. Terraorce
Squad started out as a graffiti crew. The guys who
started it passed away, but before they they got off graffiti,
they gave it to me. I never forget. I was
in the back of my projects. I was maybe like
thirteen years old, and I remember I made a pledge
this is gonna I didn't know it was gonna be music,

(48:14):
but it was Terror Squad is going to be the
biggest crew you ever seen in your life. And then
I had my sister and our friends was like Terror
Squad ladies. And you know, we did this our whole life,
you know. And I hope when I'm gone it'll stick
around with all our family members and all our friends.

(48:35):
You know. It means a lot to us.

Speaker 1 (48:37):
Yeah, it's amazing to see you. So, you know, having
gone through so much trauma, loss, and I think people
underestimate how what you said, that journey of when you're
from the streets and then you suddenly get a million
dollars through a talent that you have and then it's
like you don't know what to.

Speaker 2 (48:57):
Do with it. You don't know how it works, what
to do it. You mean that we need financial literacy.

Speaker 1 (49:03):
Yeah, financial you know what to do even today, even
today like now when influences TikTok Instagram, like people are
coming into wealth so early in their life without what they.

Speaker 2 (49:17):
Say, So that's a great question. I don't know if
it's a.

Speaker 1 (49:19):
Question is I don't know questions. I was just framing it.

Speaker 2 (49:23):
Who are we? This is the problem, it's a fat
Joe is always open for advice young artists. You know
you do it all the time. You can still do it.
You can hit me in the d M. I'll talk
to you. I'll give you advice. My advice is free
all the time. But who are we to tell a
young guy or young girl who had nothing in life?

(49:48):
Let's take a sexy red? Who are who are we
to tell a sexy red who came from nothing and
now she's making millions of dollars and she's enjoying it
with a friensis. Who are who are me to tell
her that she's wrong? Who are we to tell her anything?
She made it. It's a miracle. It's a miracle that

(50:09):
she made it coming from where she's coming from. So
I can't talk down on them or tell them, yo,
don't do that or whatever. Now, if you want advice,
I'll tell you what I did. And I blew a
lot of money. You know, it's just now in life
that I'm understanding, you know, investments and taking care of
my money and taking care of my family on another level.

(50:31):
And I still have a problem with Louis Vauton and
Gucci and diamonds, and you know, I'm still attracted to
the stuff, you know, but still in all you know,
I look at all these young artists, I don't I
can't tell them, you know now if they asked me, yo, gee,
what you think I should do, and then I'll sit
down and be like, yo, go buy a bunch of

(50:52):
Subways franchise, Go buy some wingstops, Go buy some McDonald's.
You know something that you because artists. The sad thing
about hip hop is you could go from one day
being the biggest artists in the world getting two hundred
and fifty thousand the show, and four years later you're
not hoting, You're getting fifteen thousand show. That's a big disparacy.

(51:14):
And so I don't know why. I don't know why
it's like that, why they don't value the artists where
the money value stays up. But that's how it is
in hip hop. That's just a reality. And so so
many of us artists are driven off of our performance money.
I will show our touring that when something goes wrong,
like COVID. You in the house scared to death because

(51:37):
you can't go out there and make the money. So
you got to diversify. You gotta buy businesses, you got
to investments, You gotta do different things so that money
could come in through all different angles. And so that's
something I learned at at older age. You know, invest
in sneaker stores, invest in that, invest in this, invest
in that, and so that way money comes in from

(51:59):
all over.

Speaker 1 (52:00):
I think we have to learn from that hindsight because
even for me, when I started out as a creator,
I could see YouTubers who and YouTube's are the same, right,
like one year it's amazing and then the next year
it's not. And I saw so many people who came
before me that were paying off their parents' mortgages one year,
but then the next year they didn't have money to
pay their own rent because it switches up so fast

(52:22):
it is, and you just see that happening to people overnight,
and it's painful because their intention was good. They were
trying to take care of their family, but now it's
that long term they've lost out. It doesn't work well.

Speaker 2 (52:32):
You know, we have a thing in Terre Squad. We
always take care of him, and always take care of
mothers and dad's. You know, if your mother and dad
wasn't rich or didn't have to take care of you,
we take care of them. And so it's a great
honor to look at my brothers and know that each
one of them take care of their mother, take care
of their father, you know, because we at this age.

(52:54):
You know, if we fifty years old, now you know
they're eighty years old. So these times you gotta really
look out for them. And so I love a person
that actually takes care of their mother, takes care of
their father. Now, if they're wealthy or they have money
at the time, great, nothing wrong with that. But if
they ain't got it, you know, I'm more afford taking.

(53:15):
You know, I went through a tax problem one time.
It wasn't really my fault, but I did. And the
biggest thing I got scared of when they told me
you didn't pay your mortgage is you didn't pay your
car notes. You didn't this I had accountant. I'm sending
them wire transfers and he's robbing me. He's not paying
my bills. But my biggest fear at that moment was like,
oh my god, my mother's house. We didn't pay the

(53:36):
mortgage for my mother's house. That would have been the
worst thing that ever happened to me, for somebody to
show up to my mother's house and throw out my
mother and father. I cared about their house, and they
live in a modest house. I care about their house
more than mine. That's just it's just me.

Speaker 1 (53:54):
Yeah, what's that like when it feels like everyone's like
you're trying to take care of people with an accounting friend,
people stealing from you.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
I mean that man, they stole from me a lot
of times. But I realized is just not too many
people can have access to money and not have the
temptation of stealing. And so you learned, you know, I'm
a very trusting person. You know, I'm a very trusting person.
So but you learn that these guys they can't handle that.

(54:21):
And so catching your best friends stealing from you, catching managers,
catching accounts. We just caught an accountant. Now we shoot
them with millions of dollars and so now they got
to pay back, you know, through the insurance or whatever
the case may be. But we went through a lawsuit,
forensic account these people, you bring them to your house
like their family, you around their kids like and you know,

(54:43):
and they and they're stealing your money and so and
you're so busy working trying to get to money that
you ain't busy watching. Oh I got five dollars deposited
in the bank, I got this and this and that.
So it's like, you know, uh, they pray on you
when they figure out, oh, he ain't watching. Yeah, but
everybody comes out in the in the wash, Well, don't

(55:06):
come out in the rash, comes out in the rents.

Speaker 1 (55:09):
How hard is it to stay trusting and soft hearted
and a good person when when.

Speaker 2 (55:17):
These things happen, that's just who I am.

Speaker 1 (55:19):
You're going to carry on being that way because that's
who you want to be.

Speaker 2 (55:22):
That's who I am. A lot of times, you know, uh,
people done stuff to me, not just still, but just
where you know, me and my wife have discussions and
she's like, yo, don't change you. Know. You are who
you are. You can't let people change you because a
lot of times we dread things and people do horrible

(55:43):
stuff to us, and then you yourself could become that person,
you know, and so we're not doing it. You know,
I told you the story of I was bullied and
then became the bully. And so we don't let people
affect who are true morals and our true character is
you know, it happens, hurts you move on.

Speaker 1 (56:01):
Yeah, I think that's true. Yeah, what what we often
judging a person is who we become because you're thinking
about that quality in them so much that all of
a sudden that becomes your reality.

Speaker 2 (56:12):
Yeah. Because you repeat that, you think like, yo, you know, yeah,
they did it to me, I'm gonna do it to
somebody else. And it's just a cycle that you got
to snap yourself out of, you know, and people you don't,
you know, you don't, you don't think that that's cool
because you've seen somebody do that. You know, you gotta
you gotta say this is this. But that's how the

(56:35):
story to my life is all about taking the negative
and turning it into a positive and stopping the years
of being poor, not being successful, not going to another
level of my family treat From here on, I want
to pass it down to my sons, my daughters, my

(56:56):
grandkids and how and give them that motivation to change
that family tree because before me, everybody, you know, we
hard workers, but they end up being you know, poor
regular people, and so that's that's that's why I press on.
That's why I'm in six cities and in one week.
That's why I'm like, you know, it's not greed, it's

(57:17):
just taking it to another level so that generations behind
me could follow that example. I don't know if it's
I'm not telling you I got money the last generations.
I'm telling you that I've given them that motivation where
they can say, my grandfather, you know, my great grandfather,
this guy he worked six days out the week. He

(57:38):
flew like the fly, he flew he did, you know,
just that, you know, to change the whole mindset of
our family tree before me. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (57:48):
Yeah, And that's powerful and needed because I feel like
if people are seeing, like even you at your career,
at this stage, you're still working that hard. And that's
why I see when I look at people in the
industry that come on the show that have been famous
for three decades, you know, making money for three decades,
and they're still working harder today.

Speaker 2 (58:06):
You know, there was guys like that, oh what's my man?
Richard Simmons, Richard Simmons. It was guys that I wish
I knew their names that they used to have something
called was it family squares or oh back in the days. Well,
they would take these squares like it's like tic tac toe,
and they don't have your celebrity that've been around for

(58:29):
thirty years and the damn that's very famous in America,
Like now we got hip hop squares, but Hollywood squares.
So they would take Jay Shetty twenty years from now
and you'll be up there answering the question of this.
So they've been doing this a long time. You know,
there's been celebrities that held one. You know, you'll always

(58:51):
get a Danny DeVito Jersey Subs commercial or something like.
These guys been sticking around a while. And so that's
fat Joe. You know, I'm mady here. You know I
want to stick around. You know, I want to bump
into you in a red carpet. I wanted this, you know,
that's that's what I want to do.

Speaker 1 (59:07):
Yeah, I love that. I mean talking you were talking
about kid taking care of your parents. A big fut
for you is it was taken care of, like you said,
future generations. And I know that you are father to
a child who has Down syndrome autism and as far
as I know, at least at the time, you were
a single parent for a while, or maybe even.

Speaker 2 (59:24):
Well, I'm a kid, I was a kid. We was
like nineteen, you know, so me and his mother was together.
Then we broke up and there was this one rainy
day she walked up. We had some like makeup sex.
She comes back, she says she's pregnant. I tell I
don't want to be with you, you know, and she's like, no,

(59:45):
this is my baby, this, this that. So thank god
we didn't have an abortion. But Joey's born and it's crazy.
He's born in the same hospital that my sister caught
the coma in prong Lebanon Hospital. So if I get shot,
I'm going to another hospital. I'm not going there, trust me.

(01:00:07):
And so, uh, you know, the doctor comes and says, listen,
we got bad news. I'll never forget that. And he
sat me down at her and she was like, oh,
I can't raise this baby. We got to give him
away for adoption. And then my mother and father just
jumped in, right, I mean, it was like, oh, no,
this is our baby. We're not doing that. And so

(01:00:30):
we've had full custody since he was born. I got
to thank my mother and my father for pretty much
raising Joey. You know, he's he's their kid. You know,
he's my kid, you know, but he's their kid. You know.
My father to this day sleeps next to Joey, you know,
in the same bed, you know. And now my father's older,

(01:00:52):
and Joey watches him. So Joey, if my father sleeps
too long, whatever, Joey's in his wheelchair, he's watching my father.
He didn't want my office outside telling jokes. He's happy
that he's telling jokes. You know. He's a very smart kid,
and we just say he's our biggest blessing. I feel
like if I would have abandoned Joey, I would have
never had the success I have, you know. I feel like,

(01:01:16):
you know, it's hard to deal with a special needs kid,
but they bring so much joy to the world. And
if you know me and you we get sad, we
get happy. We're talking about depression. This guy is always happy,
like he's in the state of happy. You know. Sure,
we want to, you know, if he could have talked,

(01:01:36):
if he could have walked, you know, but you know,
like I tell you, part of my process of not
being depressed, not being mad, not blaming God. Right, he
is always saying the right dealing with this is what
it is. We did it, and we got to look
forward towards the positive. And so so ever, you know,

(01:02:00):
blame God. I never blamed nobody. I just said, Yo,
this is what it is. We love him, he's ours.
We're gonna take care of him forever. We're gonna make
sure he's great, he's loved, he's happy. And so that's
how we deal with Joey. And another thing, I never,
you know, blame God for anything. You know, I accept

(01:02:21):
the good and the bad. You know, my belief and
my faith in God is just is legendary, and I
believe that all our blessings come from God. You know,
that's my true belief in my heart. And so just
let your audience know that.

Speaker 1 (01:02:34):
Yeah, no, that's beautiful. I mean with Joey specifically, like
what was the most challenging phase, And because I know
you do a lot to say in power communities, raise
awareness about this because of course.

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):
Man, it's hard, you know. And then going back to
the hip hop ravotal being tough. So for many years
I wouldn't let people see Joey or nothing like that
because hip hop was so beef prob. You know, I
never wanted nobody to disrespect my son and so but
you know, we always you know, I had this loving relationship.

(01:03:10):
You know. The bottom line is, you know, in life,
whatever God throws at you, or whatever they throw at you,
you gotta deal with it. You got to man up,
you know. And I'm proud of the job we've done
with Joey. He's just a beautiful kid, you know, and
you know he knows he's the dawn. You know. When

(01:03:30):
we go to dinner with my son and my daughter,
you know, he sits at the corner of the table
and looks at them like this my little brother, this
my little sister. You know he knows that. So he's
the biggest blessing.

Speaker 1 (01:03:43):
That's beautiful, man. It sounds like you know, again I'm
going back to what you said at the start of
the interview, is that the guy who made the music,
the fact Joe that make that music, is very different
to the Joe that I'm sitting with. Twenty twenty four.
What are the biggest differences in what's love of lean
back all the way out? Like, what's the difference between

(01:04:04):
that and.

Speaker 2 (01:04:05):
All I can tell you is that with every one
of those songs, you describe my backwards to the wall.
I was fighting for my life. The only way I
knew how to make it was through music, and so
I channeled these energy and this music, and thank god,
they became anthems and hits. But uh, you know, fat Joe,

(01:04:27):
the person has always been different. You know, I've always
been a family man. I've always been for my community.
You know, before we had social media, before we had things.
You know, I've been raising money for people. I've been
giving back to my community, computers to schools, libraries, you know.

(01:04:47):
I have a business in the Bronx Now was a
sneakers called Sneaker store called up in y Cea. We
have a school in the store where the kids come
after school, they eat, they learn computers, they get mentored.
They I mean, we don't stop. You know, just last
week we gave to Haiti. Right Rich, My best friend
Rich is Haitian. So the turmoil and everything that's going

(01:05:11):
on in Haiti where kids aren't famine, you know, and
for some reason, I feel like they don't get this awareness.
I feel like they don't get this same love as
anybody else. So we raised a bunch of food for
Haiti and money, and so you know, we've been doing
this when the cameras is off. Man. You know, I
just feel so blessed that I'm able right now when

(01:05:33):
I cut it with you if I want to eat
a steak or lobsocky eat it, whatever I want, I
to get it. I'm not feeling bad about that I
worked for it, you know, but I do believe in Yo,
what about dumb you know what I'm saying. What about
taking care of the less fortunate? What about providing for
the people. So we've been like this whatever, it's just
now it's social media.

Speaker 1 (01:05:54):
Yeah, it's nice to be able to see it though,
because I feel like, like we were talking about, there
are so many dark moments in your life, but even
see with you for a few moments, I'm like, you
have a light energy about you right like as in you.

Speaker 2 (01:06:06):
Know, what's so crazy is there's this video going viral.
I don't know why something here is going viral. I
don't know what it is. You can't put a camera
on fat Joe and it that just don't go viral.
It's going There's no way around there. And so I
didn't know. I said, it's going. I don't know what
to tell you is something's gone right. And so I

(01:06:26):
did an interview maybe a year ago, right, And I
remember I was tired and the guy came up to me.
I was at Vegas and I wanted to get some sleep.
I flew and he's like, fat Joe man, I got
a podcast. I want you to do it. And somehow
I allowed them in my room, dead tired, and he
interviewed me and I said, I told the story about
one time when I was young. You know, when I

(01:06:47):
was in high school, I robbed my whole gym class.
So I stuck up the gym class. It's like seventy students.
He says, without a gun. I said there, without a gun.
You know, I robbed everybody. In fact, the guys that
robbed helped me carry the jets and the walkman's and
stuff outside school. I couldn't even carry. It was seventy,
you know. But it was it was. It was it

(01:07:07):
was power tripping. It was it was like see if
I could do it right. But in any case, I
told this story right, And now all of a sudden,
I don't know yesterday and today it's been virabl Mania
like and everybody's like, oh, this guy's a liar, Like
I can't be like, you know, it's that type of thing.
But I looked at it, uh today this morning when

(01:07:29):
I got in the car, and I said, man, it's crazy.
You believe this guy who tells this story raises food
and money for Haiti just last weekend and gets back
to the community and this and that. It's just such
a contradiction. And so UH Puerto Rico, we sent a
million pounds of UH. We send a million pounds of

(01:07:52):
women's hygiens food water when they had the hurricane, you know,
it was four airplanes we sent them over there. Just
last year, some Muslims from the Bronx UH seventeen of
them died and the fire. We raised over two million
dollars for them. And so we just constantly but you

(01:08:14):
know me, it's like to the point out there, be careful,
careful what you wish for, because soon as something happened,
they knocking on that door and they're like yo, Joe,
And I'm like a and I'm with you guys. What
we're doing, man, How we're raising the money, How we
gonna you know, how we're gonna make this happen. But
I love that, you know. I tell you a story.
One day, I'm driving by myself and I'm in the

(01:08:36):
Rose Royce and I gotta get gas and I pull
over in the Bronx. That's where I'm from. You let
me telling. I'm the King of the Bronx. And so
I go to the Bronx, I go to gas station.
I go to the gas station to get me a water.
When I'm coming out as a homeless guy there. Now,
this guy ain't homeless by choice. He ain't one of
these hoboes. He's homeless, you know all you want. He's

(01:09:00):
a real man. What's in right? And so he comes
fat Joe, and I said, could we curse on this? Yeah, Joe,
and you fly mother for you? You fly mother? Right?
He's dead homeless, Like he says, I don't want no money.

(01:09:20):
I don't want no money. So I'm like, yo, what's up?
He's like, I just want you to know a homeless
man is the closest to the street. We know what
you do out here for us, we know how you
take care of us. Or I got so emotional that
day driving home, I was like, well that's what it's

(01:09:41):
about when you got a homeless dude talking about Yo.
I don't want no money, but I know what you
do for us. I know how you take care of us.
I'm like, Wow, that's what it's all about. You know
what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (01:09:52):
Absolutely, absolutely, And that's I think doing good in silence
is what real doing good is because you know, then
you're really doing it for the people. Then you're really
doing it for the people that you're serving.

Speaker 2 (01:10:08):
I have a lot of friends Muslim friends.

Speaker 4 (01:10:12):
And you know, I'm Christian, right, but a lot of
my best friends are Muslims and they're very successful, but
they have big hearts and they give back so much.

Speaker 2 (01:10:30):
But and they never brag. They never say I gave this.
I never gave that. I never gave this. You know,
a whole different culture. And so you know, I've seen
them the way they move. You know, I love how
they move with how they give back to their community,
you know, and they're not trying to shame their community

(01:10:50):
by giving back. They just you know, embrace them, give it,
let's move on. It's thank God that we can give back.
That's the whole thing. Yeah, you know, you know, you
got to God that he gave you an opportunity to
give back, and I believe you know, you know, I
went to a funeral one time and you know it

(01:11:15):
hit me. It was well I knew this before that,
but it was Revenu Shopton. He was at a funeral
and he said, you know, when you die, nobody cares
what car you drive, Nobody cares what clothes you had,
Nobody cares what this. What they want to know is
what did you do for the people? And it resonated

(01:11:35):
with me so much because it's like, what are you
doing for the people? You know were happy for you.
You're successful, you're living a great life this but what
did you do? How did you come back and give
to the community. How did you come and change lives?
How did you mentor people? How did you put people

(01:11:55):
give them jobs? So that you know, in my store,
both two of my three store was own two stores.
Two of my stores, the managers a single parent mothers.
One of them just bought a first house and she
called me one day, I get it, yo, man, I'm
so happy I bought my first house. I know what
you mean now, Joe, and you like, yo, you know

(01:12:18):
you know we're doing this so you could change your life.
So these impactful stories, uh, they make they make the legacy. Yeah,
they make everything. And that's how I look at it.

Speaker 1 (01:12:27):
Yeah, do you think do you think hip hop's changing
slightly when you look at like Ja Cole apologizing after
you know, he got involved in the beef and then
he stepped back and he actually said, oh, you know what,
I was being an old version of me. That's not me.
And if you saw that video, well me.

Speaker 2 (01:12:44):
You know, the biggest thing is just yesterday. You know,
I had one of the biggest, most dangerous rap beefs
with fifty cent. I was sitting next to him having
the best time in the world. We're brothers. I get that.
But when you called out in hip hop, you gotta respond.
And so I'm a big fan of j Cole, but

(01:13:05):
it started from that. So I see, he probably saw
that they could get real messy and real ugly, and
so he said, yo, you know what, this ain't me.
I don't want no parts of it. But he definitely
got a stripe off his you know whatever, he's a
sergeant or whatever, he is, the corporal. They took a
stripe off for that. Because of hip hop, they call

(01:13:26):
you out, you come out. You know, that's just what
it is.

Speaker 1 (01:13:29):
That's a sport.

Speaker 2 (01:13:30):
That's the sport. You gotta come out. And a guy
like him, he was you know, he was a king.
You know, he's so talented. He's a king. So it
was like, wow, call you did that. But I get it.
I get all scenarios. He was mature enough to think
past the lyrical beef and say, yo, this might turn physical.

Speaker 1 (01:13:50):
I know, it felt like he was kind of like,
that's just not the energy he wants to play in anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:13:54):
That's just not I'm not mad at him, but I'm
just saying from a real hip hop artist, you know,
you know, I've been called out and I got to
step up, even if I think the artist is a
million times better than me. You know, it's crazy because
I remember one time a funny battle was ever Last.

(01:14:15):
You remember I jump around eminem andem eminem I think
called them matter. But he came out like Everlast said
his rhyme. It was incredible and he moved. You know,
you gotta come out. You know hip hop, you're talking
all this, somebody calls you out, you gotta step out.

Speaker 1 (01:14:33):
Yeah, yeah, that interesting. So the sport is this.

Speaker 2 (01:14:36):
I love Jacob. I'm a huge fan of him. I
get it from a mature standpoint, but also, you know
hip hop, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta bring the
sword out when it's time. Got it, That's what it's about.

Speaker 1 (01:14:50):
Yeah, Well, we were saying earlier that you at the
we were in the j Lo movie together. You play
this prominent role.

Speaker 2 (01:14:59):
In the movie too.

Speaker 1 (01:15:00):
I'm in the movie too. I'm a I play What
am I forgot?

Speaker 2 (01:15:04):
What is it? What is got?

Speaker 1 (01:15:05):
The big horn?

Speaker 2 (01:15:05):
God or something?

Speaker 1 (01:15:06):
Yeah, yeah, I forgot which one? I forget which astrological
side of my forgot knowing the big areas? Maybe anyway, Yeah,
I'm one of the astrological signs. And uh, you played
the therapist. But it sounds like you've been on would
you say you've been on some other spiritual journey, a
healing journey across.

Speaker 2 (01:15:25):
My whole life. I mean, God has had his hand
on me. I've been shot at maybe thirty forty times.
There's times I deserved it. There's times I seen the
bullet go like this and I knew God was there.
And so that's why you said, you Joe, why you
helped the people? I mean, Jesus Man, this guy saved
my life so many times, like stuff that I was
supposed to go down for and I never did. And

(01:15:46):
so I'm like, wow, I'm just so grateful to God
that I got to help the people. I gotta spread
the message. I gotta say I'm faithful to Jesus Christ.
That's my God. My Lord has save you. So uh,
you know, my whole life is a spiritual journey and
and just me being the leader, uh in my community.

(01:16:08):
You know how many people's lives are saved. You know
how many killers came to me. It was like, Joe,
could I talk to you? And yeah, I'm homeboy, dis
me I'm gonna kill him. And I sat with them
and literally, I tell you, I don't drink. Sat with
them all night and drank Hannessy with him to convince
him not to kill that guy. And that guy never

(01:16:28):
knew that I'm the guy who convinced this guy not
to kill that guy. I don't even like that guy,
but I don't want my friend to go to jail.
So I'm like, yo, bro, he nah, that ain't there.
It don't worry regard to deal with that guy. This
usually I'm serious. I mean time talk to I've been
a therapist my whole life, talking people off the edge.

(01:16:49):
I'm telling you, man, like yo, you know, it's like,
forget about it. I got a friend now he's fighting cancer.
Shout out pretty low. It came back and went away
and came back. Now he just got the thing thing
that and then you know, I gotta go in there.
You know, now I gotta go to that. He says,
you're on the list. You're beside my wife. You're the
only person to wear on the list. He got hundreds

(01:17:12):
of friends, but I'm the one on the list. I'm
the guy that gotta go in there and pray with
pretty little and see him fighting the cancer and this,
and so it's tough for me. People don't really really
realize in all one day's work, I'll come do this.
I'll go to an old lady I know's funeral, after
pay for the funeral. Uh, then go and make a

(01:17:34):
song later. And like, you know, my life is crazy.
So it's almost like I'm like I'm a hip hop
evangelist at all times. So like this is every single day,
you know what I mean. Way, I gotta you know,
I can't just be fat. Joe the Rapper I gotta
go and heal the people in a strange way.

Speaker 1 (01:17:57):
And you go on your business venture too, right, Like,
that's part of.

Speaker 2 (01:18:00):
Why fight the time when you can read? Now, listen,
let me tell you something. You don't need it now,
but one day you might need. Your wife tells you
she loves the salt and pepper. She's lying. You gotta
stay in the game, it guys, Why fight the time
when you can rewind? The time is rewinded. The number

(01:18:22):
one product we have it in Sally's Beauty is the
number one product man or female. And so we got
rid of the stigma. We got Travis Kelce on the box.
We got Tyson Beckford, one of the biggest supermodels in
the world. We got Dj Khaled I mean, John Carlo Novella,
famous guy. And so you know, I've been the one

(01:18:45):
thing you can bully me or clown me for is
I hate white here. And so since I was twenty seven,
I was getting white hen and I've been using all
these other products. Some of them have burned my skin.
Some of them it ain't true to color. If I
get a brown and a look purple, you know they
clown me. On Twitter, Joe got the shoe polys on again.

(01:19:05):
So I wanted to be create a product alone with
my sister, Carolyn Aaronson and Jeff Averison. They own it's
a tents, they own women's hair products. It's the billion
dollar company. So we're best friends. We've been on vacation
with each other fifteen sixteen years, my wife and her
best friends. And I was like, yo, candle, let's make

(01:19:25):
a product. And it's moving. It's gone, I think in
another year to be everywhere.

Speaker 1 (01:19:31):
You know, yeah, yeah, no one wants to get bully
having purple hair or that something.

Speaker 2 (01:19:35):
All you got to get rid of the stigma. Even
me when I used to go in there, I used
to sneak in there almost like I was buying my
wife some When your wife tells you to buy some tampons,
that's like recon bro. You diving through the oss. You're
rolling on the floor. You don't want nobody to hear
you go off to the counter's evs. You're like, yeah,
get me out of here. It's the same thing with
the hair coloring. When men's hair coloring, nobody wants to know,

(01:19:58):
and but we get ready to stigma of it because
men were really ashamed to say they were doing it.
But I had some artists I stepped two to get
on the box and they're like, yeah, I don't do that.
I'm like, bro, like, yes, you know, you fully rewind,
but you gotta be kidding me. Bro, you don't use
the you don't use the product like you know your

(01:20:20):
fifty something. Your lines are like this that like your brother.
I you can tell one million. I'm like a detective.
One thing I could tell is uh not in a
terrible way. You do what you want. It ain't my fault.
But I could tell botox, and I could tell uh

(01:20:40):
men's hair color. I just don't know why I could
just tell. I'm like, all right, you know what I'm saying,
and you know, let's keep it real. If you sixty
years old looking thirty, you're doing something, you know it
is what it is. You know. Smokey Robinson, the living
legend of Icon. He looked twenty three still, you know,
I mean, I'm not disrestracted him. I'm saying, you know,

(01:21:02):
that's what he feels, and you know he wants to
look young till he dies. I restract that and you
have no problem with that? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:21:09):
For you as well? I mean you went on your
whole weight loss journey.

Speaker 2 (01:21:12):
Yeah, I had like that.

Speaker 1 (01:21:13):
Yeah, my dad, what was that?

Speaker 2 (01:21:15):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:21:15):
Why did that?

Speaker 2 (01:21:15):
Because the first thing was big Pun died right from
my heart attack twenty something. You know, only people I
knew that god that died were like murdered and you know,
being twenty seven and dying because you weight that was
like half the journey. Because I was four hundred and
eighty pounds at one time. That was half of it.

(01:21:36):
Then I had another friend who was another guy twenty
something years old. He passed away of a heart attack.
I went to the funeral. He had a daughter like me.
He was funnier than me. And when I sat there,
it was almost like an episode of Eberdezias Scrooge where
he takes you back to look at your life. So
I looked at it. I was like, oh, this is
me next. So I had no choice but to you know,

(01:21:59):
work out, eat right, stay off the cabs. You know,
you know I went through all that.

Speaker 1 (01:22:05):
How did you set all those habits up? Because those
are hard things, like people struggle, like.

Speaker 2 (01:22:11):
You gotta live.

Speaker 1 (01:22:12):
It was just pure motivation from that.

Speaker 2 (01:22:14):
You want to live, you know, people tell me all
the time you're not so fat. YOA I just said, yo,
I just want to live, and so this world is
so beautiful that I just want to live. And every
day I wake up, I caught some of my friends
and you believe we got another day. You believe we
got another day. And so I just want to live.

(01:22:34):
So health is wealth, and you could be I got
a friend he caught a terrible infection. Right. This guy's
a billionaire. He got a boat bigger than this building,
He got everything he wants. But we thought he was
dying for like a year and a half. They couldn't
find this affection. He got skinny. He was just IV's

(01:22:56):
on him, this and this and that, and so thank
god he snapped back and they found it what it was.
But I mean, that's the true meaning of no health
is wealth. If you ain't got your health and you
got all the money in the world, you can smile
at it all you want. But if you ain't got
your health, you know you ain't got nothing.

Speaker 1 (01:23:15):
Yeah, how long did it take you?

Speaker 3 (01:23:16):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:23:16):
What was that price?

Speaker 2 (01:23:17):
Years? Bro? Yes, it was years. I used to at
one time, when I was really on it, I used
to work out maybe.

Speaker 1 (01:23:23):
Three times a day, three times a day, three.

Speaker 2 (01:23:26):
Times a day. I was like addicted. And if I
flew to Vegas to do a show, I'd go straight
in the gym. You know, I wouldn't need a cracker.
There was that one time I wouldn't need a cracker.
I wouldn't need it like I was just like, you know,
and every day with the trainer, my man his name
was the Mind Muscle Connection. He'd be like buying muscle connection,

(01:23:46):
and he would come and do all that stuff, pushing
the eighteen wheeler tire in the middle of ninety degree
weather box just you know, I did it all, you know.
And and then eventually you learn how to eat, because
at the end of the day, is the carbs just
killing us. So it's bread when you eat it, say

(01:24:07):
you take a salty pretzel, it turns into sugar, Rice
turns into sugar, pasta turns into sugar. All these things
you don't know. And I met people who say, you know,
I'm diabetic, and they like, I don't even eat sweets.
But they don't realize that these carbs they're eating is

(01:24:27):
actually going in your body as sugar. And so I
had to teach myself how to eat, you know, Now
every time I eat, I eat defensively. If I eat bad,
it's because I really want to eat bad bother than
that defense. So I'm like, if I get a rice
in chicken. So yesterday I bought a it's kind of

(01:24:47):
whack too or yellow rice with lobster, right, and then
I brought it to my house. I ate the lobster
and might have touched the rice like tip tip the
whole thing in the garbage. Know, if if I eat sushi,
the least rice in the world, don't try to bring
the rice. This this that everything I'm eating is defense.

(01:25:09):
Everything is defense. Everything is like yo, try to stay
away from the cab. Try to stay away from the car.
Get the chicken with.

Speaker 1 (01:25:15):
The amazing transformation.

Speaker 2 (01:25:17):
It's like the way you brush your teeth. Hopefully everybody
here brushes their teeth as soon as you wake up
twice a day. As soon as you wake up, you
gotta brush your teeth, right, that's number one, right, And
so that's how I eat now. Now I eat like
you know, even if I went and got a sandwich
right now, somehow I would eat one part of the

(01:25:38):
bread in the three parts of the bread, it's still there.
But I ate the meat. That's how we do, right, Rich,
That's how we do all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:25:48):
It's amazing. It's inspiring for others as well. That's weird
making it.

Speaker 2 (01:25:51):
I still feel like me, So even though I slimmed up,
I still feel like the same person. So when people
tell me all the time, yo, Joe, you know, I'm like,
what are they talking about? Like, I'm still what's that movie? Hello? Show?
You don't know? How shout? Shallow? How man I look
in the mirror? I'm still fat, Joe. I'm like, Yo,
this day they'd be like, yo, you knows. Wait not

(01:26:13):
so fat. Job'll be like, Yo, what's these guys talking about?
I'm shallow? How you know? It's crazy?

Speaker 1 (01:26:20):
It's great, Joe, It's been such a joy talking to you, man.
Thank you for your time, your energy. We we end
every episode with a final five. These have to be
answered in one word to one sentence maximum. As a
poet and a rapper, I'm sure this is very doable,
but fat Joe, these are your fast final five. The
question one is what is the best advice you've ever
heard or received?

Speaker 2 (01:26:41):
Don't stop keep going? And that's that's that's from DJ Kelly.

Speaker 1 (01:26:47):
Nice stop keep going that they want you to stop,
they want you to start.

Speaker 2 (01:26:52):
He's you know, he's a guy, I tell them, and
he said, you can't just can't impress Kelly. So I
told him, Yo, I just got a TV show. Don't stop,
keep going, keep going. So he keeps me motivating. I
like that. Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:27:06):
Second question, what's the worst advice you've ever had or
received it?

Speaker 2 (01:27:09):
I would say the worst advice average received was drugs
are good. Yo, These drugs are good. Nah, I was,
I'm good.

Speaker 1 (01:27:24):
Question number three, If they make a movie about your life,
who's gonna play you?

Speaker 2 (01:27:29):
It's gonna be a young, handsome, Spanish Latino guy for sure,
and I'm gonna pick them out. I'm gonna make sure
this guy is fly as hell. But I don't believe
we have one out there yet. I don't believe the
guy who plays Fat Joe is a star. Yet. It'll
be some somebody will host do a casting.

Speaker 1 (01:27:49):
They're not born yet.

Speaker 2 (01:27:51):
They're born, but we don't know them yet. They're walking
around Brooklyn, they're walking around LA they're walking around Chicago
aspiring artists, but they haven't been on TV or movies yet.
I've never seen a guy on TV and said, oh
this Fat Joe.

Speaker 1 (01:28:04):
Yeah, all right, question them before when you were referring
to movies that it feels like your life has been Sometimes,
what's a movie that's already out there that you think
is the best depiction of what it was like? I'm
a movie guy, Yeah, I'm a movie I love movies. Bronxtown, Godfather,
Godfather guy.

Speaker 2 (01:28:26):
Right now I'm at that Michael Cole, I'm saying, I
gotta move a solace now. This is tricky out here.
I gotta be Michael right now. It's so crazy. Just
last week, Uh, I was thinking to myself, I said
that right now, this is this, this is Michael Coley
on time. It's just so wicked out there. You gotta
think like Michael, you know what I mean? So I

(01:28:48):
would say Godfather, But Bronxtail is definitely, uh, one of
my favorite movies of all time. I learned a lot
from Bronxteill. You know, I got shot one time. I
know we can't go into that now. We did, but
the guy owed me ten dollars and I kept harassing him,
and the guy was so scared of me that he
came back and shot me out of fear. So you've

(01:29:08):
seen the movie Bronx Taill when he kept Colodial, kept
chasing the guy that owed him two dollars, and Sonny
the Dawn told him, y'all you got rid of him
for two dollars. I should have learned that in the box.
You know. So I love movies because I always learned
so much from movies. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:29:26):
Nice and fifte and final question. If you could create
one law that everyone in the world had to follow,
what would it be?

Speaker 2 (01:29:33):
One law that everybody else it would be give back
to the lext fortunate. You know, I got friends that
are billionaires, and I got a friend I can't tell
you who he is. He's bigger than everything, bigger than
rapping everything. This guy's big. His backyard is the beach.

(01:29:54):
He has like maybe a two hundred million dollar house
in the backyard is beach. Got published over sixty books.
You read his books, and he told me, you know,
he looked at me and he said, man, you you're
too generous. Man like what it says the guy with
a billion dollars. He's like, he says, I'm not like you.
I'm not as good as you. I see how you're

(01:30:15):
always giving back and all that. He says, I'm not
He's like, nah, I don't give back. He said, you
know why when I died, my grandchildren I got the
more college. That's it. They're not getting my money. You know,
like wow, you know. So I would tell everybody to
give back, have a cond heart, get back to the
less fortunate. If you ain't got none to give back,

(01:30:37):
give back your time, whatever you could do for your community.
You need to do that man, and and try to
mentor the youth. I always try to tell him the
right thing.

Speaker 1 (01:30:49):
I've been seeing you a lot in Washington, DC lately
as well, So tell us about what's going on there.

Speaker 2 (01:30:54):
Just fighting health price transparency. You know, I teamed up
with an organization to the patients. One of my friends
is the founder, Kevin Morra. He's been there, he's been
my friend for over twenty years. So he teld me
what's going on in America and how many people it's
over one hundred million Americans in debt due to health pricing.

(01:31:17):
There's one hundred million, they but three one hundred million, right,
so that's one in three and people losing their families.
You know, when you go to the hospital, you sign
over a waiver that says if you can't pay, they
could take your property. And you know, I read up
on this Amish family where they had a granddaughter and

(01:31:38):
she needed a kidney and they were afraid to take
her to the hospital and sign the papers because they
were afraid of losing the farm to get her a kidney.
And you know, people are scared to go to the
doctor because of the price. So you see you walk
around New York, you see people limping, people just getting

(01:31:58):
worse and worse because they what do you do You
send your kid to college or you fix your leg
or you know, and this is going on like crazy,
and you know, there's actually a law out there that
says you got to enforce and you got to tell
people the price when they're going there. And for some reason,
they're not enforcing this, and so we're bringing awareness. So

(01:32:21):
I've been going to Hollywood. Yeah that's Washington is sort
of like Hollywood, right, So I've been going to Washington
dealing with all the politicians trying to get a law pass.
And Senator bron and Bernie Sanders came up with the
law but finally says you have to tell us the
prices not estimates estimates to be us. We want to

(01:32:45):
know what it is. And you know what does that
do for you? It creates competition. Say, I gotta go somewhere.
I got to get an MRI. I pull up my
three favorite hospitals. One of them is, believe it or not,
one of them will be twelve hundred, one of them
would be twenty eight thousand, one of them will be
seventy eight hundred. Of course I'm going with the twelve hundred.

(01:33:05):
But it makes competition. Now they could charge you whatever
they want. Yeah, So shout out the powers to the
patients and all the politicians. Let's make this happen.

Speaker 1 (01:33:13):
Yeah, that's needed. I mean I moved from London to
the US eight years ago, and in London we have
the National Health Service, the NHS, which is available for
everyone for free. But then and then you have private healthcare.
If you want, like, you know, a particular service, level
of service you.

Speaker 2 (01:33:30):
Want to sweep, if you're gonna have a big bend
totally yes, then of course.

Speaker 1 (01:33:34):
But that's the funny thing. The private healthcare in England
is actually private in the sense of it's it's an
elevated experience. It's private healthcare here is like even when
I moved in, I was playing like five ten thousand
a year.

Speaker 2 (01:33:46):
Oh man, you're like, it doesn't you don't even get me.

Speaker 1 (01:33:48):
Yeah, you don't get anything. Every time I go for percent,
still gonna pay. Yeah, it's amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:33:54):
It's all a gimmick, man. So we're bringing awareness to it.

Speaker 1 (01:33:57):
The shots brilliant man. No, that's really important. Yeah. I
feel that we need to find a way that I can't. Yeah,
it's so sad to see how many people are on
the streets or struggling because they can't afford their medical Yeah,
it's painful. Thank you for doing that. That's amazing. How
can how can people support help? How can they learn? Actually,
how can people.

Speaker 2 (01:34:15):
Follow power to the patients? We always performing on the
Instagram on social media. Uh, and we out there, man,
we out there. We're in their faces. We're going to
get the job done and help the people. This is
another way of you know, helping the people using my voice.
You know, I used to say I'm a voice for
the voiceless, but now I say I'm a voice for

(01:34:37):
those unheard, meaning there's people they got a voice.

Speaker 1 (01:34:40):
Out and it's just you can't well saying thank you
so much, man, appreciate you.

Speaker 2 (01:34:45):
It's all live.

Speaker 1 (01:34:47):
We did it, baby, we did it.

Speaker 5 (01:34:48):
Finally, it's in the books. If this is the year
that you're trying to get creative, you're trying to build more,
I need you to listen to this episode with Rick
Ruber on how to break into your most creative self,
how to use unconventional methods that lead to success, and
the secret to genuinely loving what you do. If you're

(01:35:10):
trying to find your passion and your lane, Rick Rubin's
episode is the one for you.

Speaker 3 (01:35:15):
Just because I like it, that doesn't give it any value,
Like as an artist, if you like it, that's all
of the value.

Speaker 2 (01:35:22):
That's the success

Speaker 3 (01:35:23):
Comes when you say I like this enough for other
people to see it.

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Jay Shetty

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Fat Joe: How To Be Successful After Hitting Rock Bottom & Stop Letting Failures Define You