Fat Joe: The Big Time Big Man

Fat Joe has been around since gansta rap first made it huge in the early 1990s and has stuck around strong since then. You got to give it to Fatjoe, whose real name is Joseph Antonio Cartegena. In fact, the man just recently released his latest album in March 2008, called “The Elephant in the Room.” That was only less than two years after the latest Fat Joe record, the one called “Me Myself & I.”

Before that, he scored a number one hit with the Fat Joe song, along with Terror Squad, called “Lean Back,” which splashed onto the scene in 2004. I am sure you remember dancing to that back in the summer then. Soon after, Fat Joe was being prolific again with the release of “All or Nothing” in 2005.

And those are just his most recent albums. Can you remember all the way back before 2004? If you can, you’d remember other Fat Joe albums out there like “Loyalty” from 2002, or “Jealous Ones Still Envy” from 2001. Before that, he released the self-titled LP called “Don Cartegena.”

Jealous From the Start

Is that it? No! Fat Joe, like I said earlier, was around in the early 1990s, the days when Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg were really making gansta rap a mainstream, million-dollar enterprise. In his own right, Fat Joe had albums out then too-in 1995 with “Jealous One’s Envy” and the first Fat Joe album from 1993, “Represent.”

And there you have it folks. The entire history of Fat Joe’s hip hop career. Of course, those are just the historical dates and names. Now we have to fill in the details, such as how the first big Fat Joe song off his first album - one called “Flow Joe” - scored big with a number one ranking on the hop hop chart for Billboard. Perhaps his biggest hit-between “Flow Joe” and “Lean Back” - was the 2002 Fat Joe song called “What’s Luv?” This song featured the likes of Ashanti and Ja Rule.

No Change for 50 Cent

Lately, though, perhaps what Fat Joe is most known for was his recent beef with 50 Cent. It all started in 2005, when Fat Joe put out the song “My Fofo” which supposedly was aimed at 50 Cent. Why? 50 Cent, you see, had given Fat Joe grief for singing with Ja Rule. 50 Cent came back at him with the song “Piggy Bank.”

Their “relationship” fell apart from there, with Fat Joe calling 50 Cent a coward on a radio show, and 50 Cent charging up on stage to get at Fat Joe during the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards. Think that ended it? No way. The tension still rages today. After the latest Fat Joe album was released this past March, 50 Cent released a video in which he claimed to have killed Fat Joe’s career.

Fat Joe came back with a mix tape in April of 2008, which was featuring Kill All Rats Mafia. The tape was called “Gay Unit Volume 1,” an obvious attack on 50 Cent’s posse. Stay tuned!

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