Speaker 1: Hey, fam, I'm Jada Pinkett Smith and this is the
Speaker 1: Red Table Pop podcast all your favorite episodes from the
Speaker 1: Facebook watch show in audio produced by Westbrook Audio and
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. Please don't forget to rate and review
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts. We have a legend in the house,
Speaker 1: the one and only Fat Joe. We're gonna make history.
Speaker 1: He has lived an unbelievable life. You know, I got
Speaker 1: shot in front of my mother. Boom, I get boom,
Speaker 1: I get hit. I was always a good person doing
Speaker 1: bad things. And that's what I love about you. You
Speaker 1: just keep it real. And you've been married twenty seven years.
Speaker 1: What attracted you to her? Like the Fat? He has
Speaker 1: so much wisdom to share. I heard Little Wayne gave
Speaker 1: you some advice before you went to jail. We want
Speaker 1: to put you in a solitary confined and I said, Joe,
Speaker 1: don't fold. We've lost some serious talent in the rap world.
Speaker 1: What's your take on that. I never flew nowhere for
Speaker 1: no interviewers my life. This morning on the way here,
Speaker 1: came out my hotel. The door opened and it was
Speaker 1: Carne West and UH grabbed the show that soon. Oh
Speaker 1: this is gonna be mine. Yes, we got the one
Speaker 1: and only here today, we have a legend in the house.
Speaker 1: He has lived an unbelievable life and has so much
Speaker 1: wisdom to share. He's been called a gangster and a gentleman.
Speaker 1: From the projects to prison to private planes. What a
Speaker 1: life he has lived. Fat Joe is an icon. The
Speaker 1: Grammy nominative, multi platinum selling artists, author, and entrepreneur has
Speaker 1: been called a goat of hip hop storytelling. Joe has
Speaker 1: not only worked with some of the biggest stars, Jay
Speaker 1: z Eminem, j Low Diddy, Jaunty Little Wayne, and Cardi B.
Speaker 1: He discovered DJ Kalin, who he now calls his best friend.
Speaker 1: But success did not come easy. But a man born
Speaker 1: as Joseph Antonio Cartagena. Now he's pulling back the curtain
Speaker 1: on his fast and furious life and biggest lessons in
Speaker 1: his new memoir, The Book of Jose, a raw and
Speaker 1: inspiring story of survival. Let's welcome to the Red Table,
Speaker 1: the One, the only that Joe. Yeah, what's up? Y'all?
Speaker 1: Are good? He's so good? Yes. First of all, you're
Speaker 1: trapping out the back of the house. I want to
Speaker 1: tell him, I've never seen a set up like this.
Speaker 1: I'm like you only getting money in the back, y'all.
Speaker 1: This is that's when I'm honored. Though. Well, I woke
Speaker 1: up this morning and see y'all, I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna make history this morning. When we're honor to
Speaker 1: have it, We really are. You've got so much wisdom
Speaker 1: to share. You start this book by saying you hope
Speaker 1: people can learn from your mistakes, right, That's what it's
Speaker 1: all about, Joe. I think people have to understand sharing
Speaker 1: your your biggest mistakes are not easy. It is a
Speaker 1: level of vulnerability, but it is a great service. And
Speaker 1: that's what I love about you. It's like, you just
Speaker 1: keep it real. It's just so important. Us youngns can
Speaker 1: definitely learn something from from your incredible journey as well. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: let's talk about some of your biggest mistakes and the
Speaker 1: lessons that you've learned from them. Yeah, so Fat Joe
Speaker 1: was a really he was a really bad guy one time.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be honest with you. Tell me what you
Speaker 1: thought made you a bad guy, though, Joe, because I
Speaker 1: would say you were a good guy who might have
Speaker 1: done some bad It was predator prey with I was from.
Speaker 1: It was a real bad place when I was twelve
Speaker 1: years old. I need you to put a clip of
Speaker 1: this up. The Bronx looked like a war zone. We
Speaker 1: had no parks, we had no playgrounds. The buildings were
Speaker 1: like people lived in abandoned building. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: just I don't know how else explained to you. We
Speaker 1: would play on pistie mattresses with straight dogs. I do
Speaker 1: remember staring out telling my man Louis. I said, oh, now,
Speaker 1: just say for me. Oh no, it's safe for me.
Speaker 1: And I'm poor. That's all I know is being poor
Speaker 1: my whole life. I was like, oh, I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: rich and trying. Yeah. Joe had a tough time as
Speaker 1: a kid, and he's about eleven. He discovered his first passion, graffiti.
Speaker 1: Joe was kicked out of seven different junior high schools
Speaker 1: for his excessive tagging, but his real trouble started at
Speaker 1: his eighth school. I used to get bully dervy day.
Speaker 1: I will walk out the front door of the school,
Speaker 1: dropped my bags and they'd be on a mob. But
Speaker 1: twenty guys would surround me and I would punch the
Speaker 1: toughest one in the face. That would set it off.
Speaker 1: The rest of them would just pound me out till
Speaker 1: I got on the bus. This happened for a round
Speaker 1: two years. Outside of a media family and a few friends,
Speaker 1: I felt like the whole world was against me. Leonard
Speaker 1: was my best friend. One day, the bullies come up
Speaker 1: to him and say, Yo, what you're doing with this
Speaker 1: guy if you don't beat him up with me? And
Speaker 1: what's crazy is he didn't even think twice. He beat
Speaker 1: me up with the right and that was That's a
Speaker 1: deep psychological and emotional wound. At that point, my heart
Speaker 1: just turned black and I remember crying and just tying
Speaker 1: my boots and I was just like, I'm giving it
Speaker 1: to everybody. I don't care no more. That's it. That
Speaker 1: was like my last straw at the Sweet Joe, Like
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It was like, that's it,
Speaker 1: Like everybody's going to get it. And in that process
Speaker 1: of turning into Joey Crack, some good people got hurt
Speaker 1: along the line. Okay, joe Crack, Where did that name
Speaker 1: come from? Joey Crack. The way I got Joey Crack
Speaker 1: was before the drug crack, when the teacher would ask
Speaker 1: me to go to the chalkboard and write something I
Speaker 1: always had, like sweats like I'm wearing out, and the
Speaker 1: crack of my ass which showed, and so the girls
Speaker 1: would be like Joey crack, Jeey crack, and it just
Speaker 1: stood my name. I had it. I made it my
Speaker 1: graffiti name, and then it turned into my rap name. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you left home at four scary too scary on
Speaker 1: your own. Yes, what happened with me was I had
Speaker 1: a beautiful mom's. My father was real tough, but he
Speaker 1: was a hard worker. My father never used drugs, and
Speaker 1: where he did, we had a lot of tough times
Speaker 1: with him. And this day you would have got him
Speaker 1: locked up in this age, he's in jail, like we
Speaker 1: could have diagnosed him with everything. He come home after
Speaker 1: being drunk and playing poking, losing all his money, and
Speaker 1: and my mom's will wake up three in the morning
Speaker 1: cook the mistake. Took him some food and he would
Speaker 1: eat it and be like it's too much salt and
Speaker 1: throw the plate against the wall. Now I'm a kid
Speaker 1: watching this type of stuff. You mean, to this day,
Speaker 1: my kids who are grown have never even seen me
Speaker 1: argue with my wife. This guy, he was doing the
Speaker 1: most right, and so we were bumped heads. He turned
Speaker 1: out to be a great man. And the reason I
Speaker 1: say that if a mother court cancer, they gave it
Speaker 1: one per cent to live. They cut her from ear
Speaker 1: to ear. Her head was this big. She came out
Speaker 1: talking to machine and my father still with her through
Speaker 1: the whole thing. You know, most men they run away
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, but he liked the head. He
Speaker 1: was abusive. He was on that type of time. This
Speaker 1: is back then, right. And then one day my father
Speaker 1: went to hit me. We was eating and I caught
Speaker 1: it boom, and then he went to kick me. I
Speaker 1: grabbed his legs. I had him like hanging upside down.
Speaker 1: So I was a big four team. So I tell
Speaker 1: him in Spanish, you can't put me no more, you
Speaker 1: can't put me no more, and so I let him go.
Speaker 1: I don't hit my father, but I immediately ran out
Speaker 1: to the staircase and I just cried like a baby.
Speaker 1: I was so hurt myself for what I had done
Speaker 1: to my father. I was so ashamed and embarrassed that
Speaker 1: I ran into the staircase and kept crying and I said,
Speaker 1: I can't be here. Look, I was like, I can't
Speaker 1: you know, I violated my father. I gotta go. And
Speaker 1: I immediately started hustling the next day. I was living
Speaker 1: in a crackhead hotel. So when you paid thirty five hours,
Speaker 1: they're shooting heroin and the aids epidemic at the door.
Speaker 1: They're busting people's heads open. I would act tough, but
Speaker 1: I really wasn't that tough. But Joe says, being out
Speaker 1: on his own toughened him up real quick. He became
Speaker 1: a ruthless dictator running the streets with his crew known
Speaker 1: as the Terrorist Squad. I was a young savage with
Speaker 1: a loaded firearm in my hand. That really is a
Speaker 1: combustible combination. I've robbed a lot of people in my day.
Speaker 1: I've mugged modest, honest, hard working citizens. Unfortunately, I pilford
Speaker 1: the pockets of the most nefarious criminals walking the streets.
Speaker 1: I was literally a kid when I became a stick
Speaker 1: up kid, fourteen years old. We sold a lot of
Speaker 1: drugs and made a lot of money. Wow, the type
Speaker 1: of disrespect we was doing out there was foul. We
Speaker 1: broke my mother and father. You know, I got shot
Speaker 1: in front of my mother, shot in front of my mother. Talk.
Speaker 1: We was getting money, a lot of money, And this
Speaker 1: is the lesson than this one time I had gave
Speaker 1: this kid for my block ten dollars, ten dollars, and
Speaker 1: I would pick on this guy every time I see him.
Speaker 1: I'll be like, yo, you've got my ten dollars. You
Speaker 1: got I got thirty thod cash in my pocket. But
Speaker 1: you don't know how people think, how scared or intimidated
Speaker 1: they are, or fragile they are. So one day we
Speaker 1: go July four, we gotta picnic a barbecue. We over
Speaker 1: there a hundred deep hundred. I had a hundred guys
Speaker 1: with me. I'm thinking, I am deep toughest guy in
Speaker 1: the universe, not even like forget about it. You know,
Speaker 1: if we had this project fight against my project, I
Speaker 1: would be the guy to be like, hold on one
Speaker 1: on one, the best guy, let's go. And you know this,
Speaker 1: this the type of time I was on, like le crap,
Speaker 1: pull out the best one. Let's rock and roll baby, right.
Speaker 1: So I was on that type of time, right, And
Speaker 1: so I turned the corner. Here's this guy. He got
Speaker 1: a trench gold on it is a hundred degrees is
Speaker 1: July for and he's looking at me right like dement
Speaker 1: So I went to the store bought a diapepsi. That's
Speaker 1: my drink, but at that time it was glass. I
Speaker 1: don't want to scare you your ladies, right, But so
Speaker 1: I come out. That's when I see him. He looks
Speaker 1: like demented or something right, but not enough. He's demented,
Speaker 1: but not enough. So again, you're doing here, this this that.
Speaker 1: We're going back and forth, he pulls out the gun.
Speaker 1: As he pulls out the gun, I'm still you who
Speaker 1: you think this? So I hit him in the head.
Speaker 1: I smashed his head with with the bottle I had
Speaker 1: in my hand. It's so hard. You see the sworddust
Speaker 1: in the air, and then the white meat started getting red.
Speaker 1: Told you he was demented, but not enough. But me
Speaker 1: hitting him pushed him over the edge and gave him
Speaker 1: that extra He looked at me and laughed. He said,
Speaker 1: I needed that. He cocks this thing back. Now he's
Speaker 1: so far away from me, I can't jump on him
Speaker 1: or nothing like that. So I got the run. So
Speaker 1: as I'm running, the whole world slows up like his matrix.
Speaker 1: I'm running like this, and I'm looking back and you
Speaker 1: see the shells doing like in real life. This ain't
Speaker 1: the movie it was like And I'm looking back and
Speaker 1: the bullets is going right now. I have two guns
Speaker 1: in my car, plus a hundred guys around the corner. Okay,
Speaker 1: as I'm running, I had to make a decision. Now,
Speaker 1: if I run right through here, I get to the car,
Speaker 1: he's not gonna hit me. But if I run through here.
Speaker 1: There was a bunch of little kids playing, and at
Speaker 1: one split second that I said, Najoe, you gotta go
Speaker 1: a long way. Boom, I get hit. Boom, I get hit.
Speaker 1: The second I said I'm not gonna run through these kids,
Speaker 1: he's shooting. He hits me twice. My mom's just standing there.
Speaker 1: She's looking at me. My whole shirt, white T shirt
Speaker 1: is red, and I'm looking at my mother and I'm
Speaker 1: running past her to the car, trying to get to
Speaker 1: the guns. When I finally get to the guns, I go, oh,
Speaker 1: I never felt nothing like that. I got woozy. I
Speaker 1: couldn't even stick out the guns. Oh. So my uncle
Speaker 1: Will drives me to the hospital. I get in the hospital.
Speaker 1: They started cutting my clothes immediately. The minute I walker,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking I'm gonna die. I've never been shot before. Nothing,
Speaker 1: And what was your lesson in that, Joe? Don't bully nobody, right?
Speaker 1: You Also, the other lesson is you can be with
Speaker 1: a hundred guys, but when you turn that corner, you alone.
Speaker 1: You know, that's a big lesson to learning. Well, when
Speaker 1: did you make the turn from being part of the
Speaker 1: problem to be being part of the solution. Well, I
Speaker 1: think I was always a good person, Like she said,
Speaker 1: you was a good person doing bad things. I always
Speaker 1: had a clean heart and uh and was trying to
Speaker 1: look for a way out. And um my, man, Diamond Dean,
Speaker 1: you know, digging into crazy. He said, Man, Joe, you're
Speaker 1: gonna die out here. He said, you should put this
Speaker 1: in your music and and leave the streets. My attention
Speaker 1: started to wane from hustling. I was disgusted by all
Speaker 1: the violets. And the truth is I started to witness
Speaker 1: the possibilities of another better life. At age twenty one,
Speaker 1: Joe entered the Amateur Night competition at the legendary Apollo
Speaker 1: Theater in Harvard. They really weren't no latinos going up
Speaker 1: to the Apollo rapping at the time. I told my
Speaker 1: whole delegates I was going up to the follow to
Speaker 1: try out, and they were looking at me like I
Speaker 1: was crazy. You're bro, you're making money you click it,
Speaker 1: you're talking about rap. Everybody asked. He was an instant hit,
Speaker 1: winning first place four weeks in a row word spread
Speaker 1: about Joe's magnetic personality and gangster raps. Soon, the head
Speaker 1: of a major record label offered Joe a deal that
Speaker 1: changed his life forever. I just signed it right there.
Speaker 1: I didn't know about contracts either. I was choosing life.
Speaker 1: I got a fifty dollar advance from Relativity. I couldn't
Speaker 1: believe it. It was proof to myself that I can
Speaker 1: make big money honestly without doing crime or risk in
Speaker 1: my life. Joe, what lesson did you learn after becoming
Speaker 1: so successful when keeping it real goes wrong? You know
Speaker 1: another name for a book as well. Loyalty is everything
Speaker 1: to make It's in my DNA. I'm the last man
Speaker 1: standing with you, uh, and I go down with the
Speaker 1: ship right, and growing up in my neighborhood, you know,
Speaker 1: when I became successful, I just thought I had to
Speaker 1: take everybody with me, and it's it's a bit of
Speaker 1: survivor's guilt. And so when you got the lady who
Speaker 1: used to give you poor chob, she gets sick and
Speaker 1: somebody calls and says, yo, Joe, She needs a new hip.
Speaker 1: How are you gonna say no to the lady. You
Speaker 1: know you've got millions, so you know, you look out
Speaker 1: and you're just trying to bring everybody along. And so
Speaker 1: I tried, you know, for many years, and every time
Speaker 1: you told me, I had forty fifty guys with me,
Speaker 1: um tough guys, you know. And I wanted to help
Speaker 1: them and pay their rent, buying the cars and this
Speaker 1: and this and that. And one day I can't sleep.
Speaker 1: Is God talking to me? God sent me a sign
Speaker 1: these people, A lot of them ain't really worthy. It
Speaker 1: wasn't worthy of me taking care of them and wasting
Speaker 1: my money and wasting you know, my energy of my time.
Speaker 1: God told me, yo, man, call all these guys. We
Speaker 1: in Puerto Rico. We flew over there too, private planes.
Speaker 1: We had the fourth seasons. These guys popping champagne. So
Speaker 1: I call him. It was like forty of us and
Speaker 1: I said, listen, I ain't got money, no more, I
Speaker 1: ain't got it. I can't take care of you. These guys.
Speaker 1: I grew up with something, a kid, the baby. And
Speaker 1: thirty five of them was like, are you crazy? This
Speaker 1: is our money? This If you would have heard the
Speaker 1: type of story. They was talking, and so five of
Speaker 1: them said, yeah, I'm your brother no matter what, whether
Speaker 1: you're broke or not, five out of forty and so
Speaker 1: I got rid of him. Then it's a big lesson.
Speaker 1: Were your feelings like hurt? Like what devastated? Just a
Speaker 1: lot of leaddowns. And the way they did me it
Speaker 1: was crazy. And I'm the type of guy right that
Speaker 1: you don't do that too. That's all that just drained
Speaker 1: you and it takes a lot out of you. Another
Speaker 1: crazy story. I go to jail, right. So I was
Speaker 1: popping since I was ninety, okay, and I got nothing
Speaker 1: but hits, and I'm making money. We popa shared paying
Speaker 1: the girls think I'm fly. It is what it is.
Speaker 1: So then I get into some trouble with the taxes,
Speaker 1: which really wasn't my fault. At age forty two, Joe
Speaker 1: says he hit rock bottom. His accountant had been stealing
Speaker 1: from him and hadn't paid Joe's taxes in two years.
Speaker 1: Joe was furious, you ain't paying none of my mortgages.
Speaker 1: I asked, you ain't paying none of my bills? Hey, buddy,
Speaker 1: don't kill me, funny, he said, flustered. Then he started
Speaker 1: pleading with me, don't hurt me. I never said I
Speaker 1: was going to hurt you. I insisted, my tone lowering
Speaker 1: and my demeanor comment. I send you money every month
Speaker 1: and you ain't paying my bills. I asked again. The
Speaker 1: truth was he was robbing me. The case costs Joe
Speaker 1: five million dollars plus four months of freedom. So I
Speaker 1: sit in the cell, this is unbelievable. Like I was
Speaker 1: in Sancho, paid two days for I swear to God,
Speaker 1: I'm not lying. I was in Sentuala Nicky's beach. I'm
Speaker 1: in this sound like what the Chico was here? Taco
Speaker 1: was like, what the my doing in this place? Right?
Speaker 1: And it finally hit me. It said, bro, you forty,
Speaker 1: they took all your money. Window in the cell was
Speaker 1: smaller and smaller, smaller. I had to divise a plan,
Speaker 1: you know, And so when I came out, I went
Speaker 1: straight to work, and you know, we came out all
Speaker 1: the way up and then we knew the business. After that,
Speaker 1: I knew, I'm gonna hope it's a business. So would
Speaker 1: you say that going to jail was a turning point
Speaker 1: for you? For sure? It made me take my life
Speaker 1: serious because prior to that running around. Yeah, yeah, you're
Speaker 1: not taking life serious. Yeah, I heard Little Wayne gave
Speaker 1: me some advice before you went to jails, my brother. Man.
Speaker 1: One of the saddest things I ever did was go
Speaker 1: visit Little Wayne and jail. Yeah. Not only that, they
Speaker 1: had him like chained up, like you know, really chained
Speaker 1: up like Little Wayne. They had him like, you know,
Speaker 1: like he was the killer of all right. He's my brother, man.
Speaker 1: He lives across the street from me in Miami. And
Speaker 1: so I'm walking into the jail and I get a
Speaker 1: phone call and uh, they saw ugly. The buildings ugly.
Speaker 1: It's just rusty and ugly. It looked like one of
Speaker 1: the Harry Potter buildings or something. The gate was like
Speaker 1: so and so I get a phone calls Little Wayne.
Speaker 1: But I had to get myself in at eight o'clock.
Speaker 1: It was maybe seven fifty nine. And I was like,
Speaker 1: your Wayne was south thing. He's like, no, man, I'm
Speaker 1: just telling you right now, be humble. I said, how
Speaker 1: do you do it? He said, just be humble, bro,
Speaker 1: I'm going there on something. Just going there humble. You know,
Speaker 1: if you be humble, they'll respect you, you know. And
Speaker 1: then they threw me a curveball because I'm from New York,
Speaker 1: but my residence is Miami. So last minute they made
Speaker 1: me go to jail Miami. Well, I ain't know nobody.
Speaker 1: So when I get to Miami and they said, listen,
Speaker 1: we have murderers in the end, we have rapists in here.
Speaker 1: We have leaders of cartels. Because Miami's the hull, they
Speaker 1: grab everybody throwing in there. That was the building I
Speaker 1: was in. I thought I was gonna do some Martha
Speaker 1: Stewart type big you know, you know Nick, you know,
Speaker 1: I thought I was going with the Stewart right in
Speaker 1: the doctor's building. I'm like ya. He's like, yo, we
Speaker 1: never had nobody like you in here, so we want
Speaker 1: to put you in a solitary confinement. But solitary confinement
Speaker 1: is the biggest punishment you could do. I like, look,
Speaker 1: I gotta be with the people. I'm humble. So they
Speaker 1: let me go and I never forget because I pride
Speaker 1: myself for being a tough guy, never really scared. And
Speaker 1: nobody like a man's man, right. I don't back down
Speaker 1: nobody right. And so they opened the door. There's two
Speaker 1: thousand guys, Haitians, Jamaicans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, two thousand cock
Speaker 1: Diesel guys. They see me and all together go. It
Speaker 1: felt like that the game of throwing the dragon, and
Speaker 1: I got intimidated for one second. I said, Joe, don't fold,
Speaker 1: rather than these guys, Joe don't fall. Yeah, so, Joe,
Speaker 1: we've lost some serious talent in the rap world. I
Speaker 1: know you've been speaking on this quite a bit. The
Speaker 1: day after Grammy nominative rapper Takeoff was tragically murdered, Fat
Speaker 1: Joe posted this on Instagram. Are they not born? Night?
Speaker 1: I ain't sleep. Rest in peace to the young brother
Speaker 1: take Off, one of the most humblest kids that I
Speaker 1: met of this generation. Now. I do not know the
Speaker 1: details of why this gentleman was killed, but I could
Speaker 1: talk from being the eldest states and of hip hop.
Speaker 1: We as a community, we have to move on to
Speaker 1: a new level of thinking. We have to elevate. We
Speaker 1: can't see here single white man keeping us down. We
Speaker 1: gotta fight through that and be the great kings and
Speaker 1: queens that we are. This needs to be a new
Speaker 1: era of self love, a new era of community. What's
Speaker 1: gonna stop these young brothers from getting killed every month?
Speaker 1: What you're not realizing is that with every young king
Speaker 1: did you killed? It's another person of hope from our community.
Speaker 1: M what sad is I don't understand why we hate
Speaker 1: our And obviously when you're killing somebody, you're killing your cousin,
Speaker 1: you're killing your brother, and we gotta evil out here.
Speaker 1: The devil is just really out here right now like
Speaker 1: never before. Look at Nipsey Hustle. Yeah, this guy was
Speaker 1: doing for his community. Right so right now you can say, man,
Speaker 1: Joe open businesses. He's a was getting back to the community.
Speaker 1: But if Joe gets killed out there, you'd be like
Speaker 1: he was dumb. He had to be that. Why ain't
Speaker 1: stay in the bigger house? Why? And so damn if
Speaker 1: you do, Damn if you dry. Over the past couple
Speaker 1: of years, the hip hop community has been rocked by
Speaker 1: a string of deadly robberies. Unfortunately, there's people in our
Speaker 1: own community they hate on someone else's success. You could say,
Speaker 1: damn Joe, why you got the diamonds are? But we
Speaker 1: had so it was summertime. We ain't having a c
Speaker 1: We had to sleep on the floor. When we ran
Speaker 1: out of toilet paper, we wiped by ass with the newspaper.
Speaker 1: When we had to meet. We ate eggs and rice.
Speaker 1: So you can't really break down this poor thing to
Speaker 1: me because we know it right, and so we try
Speaker 1: to inspire our community. Look, you can have this, it's attainable.
Speaker 1: You really shuck with I wouldn't say shocked, but I
Speaker 1: would say that bothered me a lot. Here's a positive kid,
Speaker 1: never bothered nobody. He wasn't into no trouble or nothing.
Speaker 1: And this kid, you're gonna kill him in front of
Speaker 1: his wife for nothing? What about the kids in there,
Speaker 1: the ladies in there, the men, and then everybody traumatized.
Speaker 1: You see the guy get his brains blown out for
Speaker 1: no reason. I was talking to charlemade I said, there's
Speaker 1: some jobs that ain't going nowhere. Prostitution was around, says
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ, robbing and around says Jesus Is. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be honest with you, and there's always going to be
Speaker 1: an aggressive person who don't have nothing, who's willing to
Speaker 1: rob somebody. So when I talked directly, I like to
Speaker 1: think Joe could talk directly to the robbers. Listen, man,
Speaker 1: you could rob him, why kill him? And my thing
Speaker 1: is when they stepped over the line of when they're
Speaker 1: killing that's another type of evil. Yeah, what do we
Speaker 1: do about all of this this violence in the community.
Speaker 1: I think people just feel so freaking hopeless about it.
Speaker 1: I know the key, this God, that's it. I just
Speaker 1: feel like we lost a lot of morals, But we
Speaker 1: gotta do It's more mentorships. It's a lot of black
Speaker 1: and brown people. They've got a lot of money these
Speaker 1: days that we could just invest in the neighborhood coach
Speaker 1: that we know he's really the good guy. You know,
Speaker 1: we know that this this lady is really teaching those
Speaker 1: girls how to dance. When you see the real deal,
Speaker 1: we have to invest in that when people are really
Speaker 1: putting in work. There's a lot of people, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to help, you know, to get overlooked. And the
Speaker 1: truth of the matter is no quick fix. I think
Speaker 1: you write Joe as far as like just putting back
Speaker 1: into the community. I mean between the killing and also
Speaker 1: the O d s specifically in the rap world. I
Speaker 1: think you're right. I think it's dark times, um and
Speaker 1: I think people just need to feel some sort of
Speaker 1: hope has always been the thing, right, Well, I can
Speaker 1: tell you that Fat Joan has been shot at maybe
Speaker 1: thirty forty times, try to get framed, to go to jail,
Speaker 1: been betrayed a million times. And I never use drugs.
Speaker 1: And I still made hit records. So they lied to
Speaker 1: the kids and tell them you've got to be hot
Speaker 1: to make a hot record. I still made a hot record.
Speaker 1: And so I just believe in, you know, dealing with
Speaker 1: it yourself. God is to check me. Yeah, I have
Speaker 1: a funny story for y'all. You know, DJ Kalets my
Speaker 1: little brother, and I discovered Kalik, and Klik really is
Speaker 1: what he is. Positive, love his family, love his kids,
Speaker 1: love his He's that and through the years he's become
Speaker 1: even more successful to me, and I've always been happy
Speaker 1: for him. I've never been less over. Every now and
Speaker 1: then you ask God, I thought I was your favorite
Speaker 1: because this guy, he's just too lucky right. No, now,
Speaker 1: he's the most luckiest guy on the way. Right. So
Speaker 1: one day I'm in the house by myself, and I
Speaker 1: get it. It's God talking to me and I know it.
Speaker 1: So when I understand that, I run the colleg's house
Speaker 1: because I lived three minutes away, I go to this house.
Speaker 1: When I walked through the back college into jacuzzi, I said,
Speaker 1: your callig he's looking at what I said. I've been
Speaker 1: talking to God. He jumped up so high and said,
Speaker 1: God is the greatest. God is the greatest. God is
Speaker 1: the greatest. God is the greatest. Got is the gay.
Speaker 1: God is God. He wouldn't stop. God is the greatest.
Speaker 1: I said this mother. No, he knew what was the key,
Speaker 1: and that's the key at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: and not moving like that. And so when you you
Speaker 1: gotta get faith, you gotta become a believer. Nothing it's
Speaker 1: more powerful than God. Yeah, you know. Another shrimp of
Speaker 1: mine is women, Like I'm surrounded by woman, strong woman.
Speaker 1: That that's what I'm talking about. The girls protect me
Speaker 1: what you do the same for them, and that's what
Speaker 1: makes it a beautiful, beautiful relationship. That's a fact. All
Speaker 1: my sisters down, you know, that's the story of my life,
Speaker 1: having strong sisters around me, powerful sisters, and I get
Speaker 1: in the middle of certain arguments and I'm the brother
Speaker 1: that looks out for the sisters. Somebody I asked me, yo,
Speaker 1: why did you jump out and defended shanty like that? No,
Speaker 1: you did that. But listen, this guy who was a
Speaker 1: friend of mine, he said, Yo, you see that's what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, I'm sitting here like flabbergasted, like this was like,
Speaker 1: you know, all blasphemy or something, right, because she's been
Speaker 1: my sister twentysothing series right. Heard my brother though I'm
Speaker 1: not even gonna lie to y'all, love him and he
Speaker 1: came for me at the time of my life. I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to disrespect her. I'm talking about the situation
Speaker 1: with somebody I considered. One of my brothers was like you, like,
Speaker 1: are you crazy, Like this's my sister. And then I
Speaker 1: noticed when I started telling them that's my sister, his
Speaker 1: whole face calmed down and said, Wow, she really is
Speaker 1: his sister. Yeah, I've seen the whole face change and
Speaker 1: he was like, oh, it ain't but for you, Joe,
Speaker 1: it might see me personally. I give no per vibes.
Speaker 1: R J Los my sister. She never saw me look
Speaker 1: at her. Ask when the whole world was talking about her. Asks.
Speaker 1: None of my girlfriends, my wife's friends, might none of
Speaker 1: them get that vibe. And you've been married twenty seven years,
Speaker 1: your wife, let's talk. Let me tell you told me
Speaker 1: to tell you she loves you, Tell her, thank you,
Speaker 1: and goddamn. She walked through that mom and like, oh,
Speaker 1: she walking on the wall. But I respect is that
Speaker 1: you guys have been able to do what you do
Speaker 1: the marriage thing for twenty seven years. As we know,
Speaker 1: that's not easy. You know what I mean, it is hard.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about your wife just for one second.
Speaker 1: We see that she's gorgeous, but what are those characteristics
Speaker 1: about her that you feel like make you strong? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that attracted you to her? No disrespect? Could we
Speaker 1: just say, no disrestract, no disrespect. Here we go like
Speaker 1: and so hold on, it's just rolling that way talking
Speaker 1: about hold on, I'm going to break to want to say, yeah,
Speaker 1: hold on, let's give a minute. This is before I
Speaker 1: had any money. I had enough, and let's be clear,
Speaker 1: I didn't have a dollar nothing. I'll tell you the
Speaker 1: whole story. She moved to Miami because she had an
Speaker 1: ex boyfriend who used to beat up all the time.
Speaker 1: She was so scared of him. She moved to Miami
Speaker 1: just so happens. I'm going to Miami with my man,
Speaker 1: Steve Lobell. So he said, yo, I got some girlfriends coming.
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, you got some girlfriend He's like,
Speaker 1: they are definitely not talking your fat ass. You leave
Speaker 1: that like, she don't like broke dudes, like you are
Speaker 1: all the way out right. So we pull up. We're
Speaker 1: in the van. The light of the van flash right
Speaker 1: on her her ass. Hold hold, let me say, can
Speaker 1: I say something else? I never see nothing like that? Right,
Speaker 1: So the bronx I never seen. I jumped out the car.
Speaker 1: She turned around. I'm like, oh my go like I
Speaker 1: could not believe she was even more beautiful. So I look, I,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, she's you're beautiful, like you know, you
Speaker 1: know you. It came out the mouth. We in Miami
Speaker 1: for like a week or two, so I keep trying.
Speaker 1: Then I convinced. I said, can I take you to
Speaker 1: the movies or something? She said, listen, I don't like
Speaker 1: guys with big mouths. If I let you take me
Speaker 1: to the movies, don't say ship. So I went to
Speaker 1: the movies, made out for the first time. It's a
Speaker 1: beautiful thing. She's drying. I used to love that. She
Speaker 1: she was a gangster. She drive a car. You know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, She drive a car. I'm just sitting
Speaker 1: on the side like, and she driving a gangster and
Speaker 1: ship and like, oh, I give right. So she drops
Speaker 1: me back off, I run and tell all my my
Speaker 1: whole love me and chick oh my loop the down
Speaker 1: kissed me here like. I'm like, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: she don't answer my calls, she ain't calling me back.
Speaker 1: I finally see it, so I'm like, yo, what's up?
Speaker 1: Where you been? She said? I told you I don't
Speaker 1: like guys with big moms. I was like, so at
Speaker 1: that point, I could have lied. I could have. I've
Speaker 1: never been with a girl like you, Like, what are
Speaker 1: you talking about? I'm sorry, I call you. Believe it.
Speaker 1: We were good. Three days later, we get back to
Speaker 1: New York. I'm driving around my hat with her, and
Speaker 1: she's like, yo, let's get a drink. So I pull
Speaker 1: over at a bar. It was irish pub by Wall Street.
Speaker 1: So as we're walking in, she goes like this and
Speaker 1: she stiffs up. Now, look, her ex boyfriend happens to
Speaker 1: be at the bar. You can't make this up. She
Speaker 1: stiffed up out of fear. The guy turned around, looked
Speaker 1: at me, and looked down at the floor. I said,
Speaker 1: he'll never say nothing in you again. Let's go. We
Speaker 1: kept walking. He never said no, no again. He knew
Speaker 1: what time it was right the last phase of the
Speaker 1: story is me and my son's mom's had recently broke up.
Speaker 1: Really my four, completely my four. She was a great woman,
Speaker 1: she school teacher smart. I was just too young, running
Speaker 1: around wild and every day, you know, back in the
Speaker 1: days you used to write the number on the paper.
Speaker 1: Every day. She go in my pocket, sixty numbers come
Speaker 1: out the next day, same thing that. That was terrible.
Speaker 1: When we broke up, I said you could take whatever
Speaker 1: you want in the house, and boy did she take everything.
Speaker 1: I mean every furniture, every TV, every painting. I was
Speaker 1: left for the mattress on the floor. Then I had
Speaker 1: this big robe and I would use it as the
Speaker 1: curtains to the sun bowe hit me. And I had
Speaker 1: a boom box. That's it. So I walked my wife
Speaker 1: into there and she's like, what the is this? She said,
Speaker 1: this is where you live. I was like, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is where I live. You know, I'm you know, I'm
Speaker 1: on hard times. She was like, And she studied out
Speaker 1: with me, and then she had girlfriends who used to
Speaker 1: tell her, you're talking to this fat guy. He broke
Speaker 1: he ain't got what are you doing. She'd be like, no,
Speaker 1: I know, my fat boy gonna make it. I know
Speaker 1: my fat boy gonna make it. She's a writer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why she get whatever she wants. Oh no, she
Speaker 1: still don't. That's why. Listen. Let me tell you something.
Speaker 1: That's what makes her don't. She's serious and so so
Speaker 1: I could tell everybody she's fine, she's bad. The deal
Speaker 1: me and her maid was I get rich if anything
Speaker 1: happened this, We're never going to change on each other.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be with each other forever. That's it. And
Speaker 1: that's what you're talking about. Loyalty. And of course you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm telling you right now, red Table, nothing is perfect,
Speaker 1: nothing is easy. You gotta work through everything. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like she could see your heart. She could see you
Speaker 1: like yo, she ain't gonna fold on me. And even
Speaker 1: when I went through the tax problems and I spoiled
Speaker 1: her because we came from nothing. She got Birkin's, all
Speaker 1: types of diamonds, all types she's she's throwing good too good,
Speaker 1: you understand, too good. I think they gotta stash closet
Speaker 1: somewhere the whole another apartment for clothes. Well, all we
Speaker 1: know those tricks. The guys know those tricks. There's no
Speaker 1: way the money she spends adds up to the closet
Speaker 1: in the house. My daughter sixteen, She checks me every
Speaker 1: second of the day. You can't say that. So my
Speaker 1: daughter turned sixteen and there were some flowers at my house.
Speaker 1: So they called me and said some boy sent the flowers.
Speaker 1: I pulled over the car. The last time I did
Speaker 1: this with Michael Jackson died. I had to pull over
Speaker 1: for like twenty minutes, started hyper ventilating in the car.
Speaker 1: I had to go through that and get home. Who's
Speaker 1: the flowers? In any case, she got a friend, right,
Speaker 1: so she Oh, you know this little boy likes it's different.
Speaker 1: It's different where you go. It's a little girl you
Speaker 1: love more than life. He's a nice kid. Oh my gosh, cute.
Speaker 1: She's older now, Oh my goodness. I love to fix
Speaker 1: and so people come at me. They want fixed marriages.
Speaker 1: We want my son with your daughter, rich wretch. Rich.
Speaker 1: People like I'm like, yo, she's sixteen. Then they turned
Speaker 1: around and be like, yo, but we rich, something like
Speaker 1: and we're rich to you're talking about like, don't she
Speaker 1: look like she's doing good? What I could tell the girls,
Speaker 1: not in your position of my daughter's position, is you
Speaker 1: gotta level up. Yeah, Yeah, I get a guy who
Speaker 1: knows what the future is. Because if you get with
Speaker 1: a guy who thinks the projects is cool, then that's
Speaker 1: your life, right, So whatever, you gotta really check that
Speaker 1: mentality and that goes of both sides. Yeah, if she
Speaker 1: is and for her for sure. So our our t
Speaker 1: T fam heard you were coming and they were super excited.
Speaker 1: So Hi, Red Table talking, Fat Joe. My name is
Speaker 1: g g Rombacher. I'm a singer songwriter. And my question
Speaker 1: for you, Fat Joe is if you could bring back
Speaker 1: to people who have passed on, who would they be
Speaker 1: and why? Oh wow? Where? You know, if it's just music,
Speaker 1: it would be Biggie and Big Punt, you know, oh
Speaker 1: my god, Like these guys died so young. You know.
Speaker 1: They're my good friends, man, my brothers. Man. My best
Speaker 1: time at life is when I discovered Punt and we
Speaker 1: went through everything. We got rich together, we got famous together.
Speaker 1: Big Pump was funny and he was so crazy and
Speaker 1: so they used to call me the fun killer. Like coming,
Speaker 1: I was like, Yo, what you're doing, You're crazy, Come on,
Speaker 1: get out of here. Like these guys were like a
Speaker 1: hot mess. Right. Biggie was my brother says they want
Speaker 1: to such a beautifu for God, like he didn't have
Speaker 1: to pass away. It's really shad Absolutely. I feel you
Speaker 1: on that for sure. So social media influencer A J
Speaker 1: has a question for you as well. Yo Fat Joe
Speaker 1: with a dude man, huge fan. He being rocking with
Speaker 1: your sister beginning shout out to the b x UM.
Speaker 1: My question for you is with you being a mentor
Speaker 1: and an elder statesman in the game, someone that everyone
Speaker 1: looks up to, what advice would you give to Kanye
Speaker 1: West for the things that he's been saying and everything
Speaker 1: that's happened to him. Right now, I'll tell you all.
Speaker 1: So I was up a whole night going over what
Speaker 1: he said, and I was just like, damn, I mean,
Speaker 1: he really did it this time. And so I was
Speaker 1: just thinking about it and how he hurt people with
Speaker 1: his statements and his comments. He really said some terrible things.
Speaker 1: And this morning, on the way here, I came out
Speaker 1: of my hotel, the door opened and it was Kanye
Speaker 1: West by himself, and we talked for about an hour,
Speaker 1: and I said, you know what you amen, you do Church,
Speaker 1: There's no more powerful person than God. Sit down, talk
Speaker 1: to God. I said, listen ya, that's people that love you.
Speaker 1: I told him, just like there's a grab the show
Speaker 1: that said God is telling me to tell you this,
Speaker 1: And I just told him, Bro, you gotta snap out
Speaker 1: of this man. You gotta get focused and look to God,
Speaker 1: because God is the answer. God is the key whatever
Speaker 1: you gotta do. He just gotta make it right with himself,
Speaker 1: make it right with everybody he offended and he hurt,
Speaker 1: and just live whatever life we have left in peace.
Speaker 1: That's all we could pray for that. You know, he
Speaker 1: finds that the only person who got that answer for
Speaker 1: Carnye right now is God. Ain't nobody else. It's just God.
Speaker 1: So my thing is, you're preaching that church, you're around
Speaker 1: holy people, You're around people no way better than me.
Speaker 1: What I'm telling you is look to God because He's
Speaker 1: the only person then straighten this out. Yeah. Well, Joe,
Speaker 1: thank you, Thank you so much. This was really very interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because we really, I mean Joe, honestly, we could talk
Speaker 1: to you all day and everybody, don't forget Go out
Speaker 1: there and buy that book. To join the Red Table
Speaker 1: Talk family and become a part of the conversation. Follow
Speaker 1: us at Facebook dot com slash red Table Talk. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to this episode of Red Table Talk podcast,
Speaker 1: produced by Facebook Watch, Westbrook Audio, and I Heart Radio.