Well, this is the first time I’ve done an interview in a bank. Having been in the game a long time, what’s your advice to new rappers in terms of how to handle their money? You gotta set aside some of your money for blowin’ it. Everybody wants to get rich and famous and blow it, and it never fails. I’ve seen the smartest of the smartest people – including myself – blow the first money they got. You’ve been waiting forever to go to the clubs and pop the bottles. You’ve been waiting forever to get the $100,000 chain. You’ve been waiting forever to get the Bentley. I think what’s helped me survive is just always remaining humble, thinking about a rainy day in the future. When you first got a lot of money, you blew it? Definitely. I was surrounded by a lot of people that had a lot of money before I became a successful rapper, so the money didn’t really impress me like that when I started selling records. I had seen money come and go, so I’ve always tried to be cautious. But I too have been guilty. When I got my first million dollar check, I bought like ten dudes $50,000 Escalades. We kept comin’ out here to Miami and renting mansions and poppin’ bottles, and it’s the movie you see over and over recycled. So one day I went to the bank and tried to withdraw like $50,000 and they told me I didn’t have that much money in my account. The lady was like, “There must be a mistake here,” and I started sweatin’ bullets. I started catching this anxiety and I was like, “Oh, my God.” Ever since you’re a little kid you have a dream of having a million dollars. Once you get a million dollars, you think it’s like water and it won’t stop coming out the faucet. And before you know it, that million dollars is gone. And in our tax bracket, it’s really like half a million, cause when you make a million half of that goes to the government. And then you keep the other half. All the way home [from the bank] I prayed big time. God gave me some more hits, and I knew never to make those mistakes again. I play and I ball but I do it carefully. Well, speaking of coming with more hits, some people have criticized your new singles saying that they sound Southern, but you’re from the Bronx. I’m not tryin’ to sound Southern, but you know, I’ve been in Miami for ten years. 90% of the new album is that boom-bap, New York Terror Squad Diggin’ In The Crates sound. I like to make music that’s relevant. If the DJs in the club are playin’ four hours of music that makes you nod your head like this, you can’t make the world stop and rock to some slow swag or whatever it may be. I try to do my New York rap, my Bronx Terror Squad rap, but to a beat that’ll be consistent with what’s being played in the clubs and on the radio. It’s something I’ve been criticized for, being from the Bronx and being an underground hip-hop head, since day one. Every time I change and stay current, they get mad at me. My biggest hits were “What’s Luv” [with Ashanti] and “Get It Poppin’” with Nelly. They say they don’t wanna see Joe with Nelly, but they don’t get mad when they see Jermaine Dupri with Nelly. People don’t realize that Fat Joe, for some reason, is under a huge microscope. When you read the [message boards on the] internet, the records they want me to put out is the records that won’t get no spins. They wanna hear songs like “Fuck Your Mother” by Fat Joe, know what I’m sayin’? But dawg, I can’t really get no spins like that. Do you think New York in general is just frustrated right now with the climate of the music game? I mean, we all just gotta make music, you know? The hit records. I hear little whispers. They are frustrated. What do you think about the Papooses, the Saigons, the Tru-Lifes? Do you think there’s a wave of New York rappers that are gonna make noise? You’re asking the wrong guy that question. At the end of the day it’s all about the music. I don’t care if you’re from the South, the North, or the West, if you make a hit record, it’s a hit record. If it’s something people feel and can emotionally vibe to, then it’s a hit. A lot of young cats spit lyrics, but they gotta be able to make hit records and come up with hit choruses and hit hooks. I don’t get mad because the South is winning right now, because it’s just another black brother or Latino brother winning anyway. That’s what I’ve always been about. Winnin’ is love. I have fun, you know? In New York they criticize the South, but when we’re in the club we’re the first ones to nod our heads to “Every day I’m hustlin’,” and we’re like, “Oh shit, that’s that shit.” So I don’t see no boundaries with music. At the end of the day we got in this game to make music for everybody, so we should appreciate everybody’s music. So you’re not signed to Atlantic Records? Nah, I wanted to go independent. I saw what [artists like] Mike Jones and Paul Wall were doing. I’d been with Atlantic for ten years. I was getting great advances, but I was really just an artist. At the end of the day I was
only getting 80 cents or maybe $1 per record. I was talking to [an indie artist] and they get like $7 a record and they own their own masters. So I stepped to Atlantic and said, “Yo, I think I can do this. I wanna go independent.” It works out very well for me financially. I got relationships. I can put together the right team to market and promote because I pretty much get my own shit done anyway. And it’s affordable for me. If you’re with a major and you don’t go platinum, they’re mad at you. But if you go gold independently at $7 a record, you’re paid. So I felt like that was the right thing for me to do. Why not try to negotiate with them for more money per record? If you have an employee that you’re givin’ 80 cents a record and he steps to you and tells you he wants $7 a record and the masters, you’re like, Nah. I don’t see that happening. When they finally gave me an offer, they still wanted half of my masters. Koch Records was offering me a better deal [than Atlantic]. And we loved what Koch Records did with Khaled’s record [Listennn] so I was really gonna go to Koch. But EMI created this company called Imperial Distribution – that’s EMI’s answer to Koch and Fontana – and they offered me a deal that was too good to be true. I put up my money and they give me a nice distribution deal, and at the same time, I have the backings of Virgin so when I go for radio adds I can get their radio staff involved. I also have my own radio staff, my own video staff, my own publicists. We are really, really independent, but they’ll help us push the buttons, and I get to keep my masters, my ringtones, everything. I get $7 a record. Do you think this is where the game is headed – will we see more major label artists leaving to go independent? This is definitely where the game is headed. And the smart people like the Cash Moneys and the No Limits are getting rich forever. But us in New York – and me, myself – are guilty of [the mentality] where they give me a million dollars and I don’t care. Give me a million dollars and pay for me and my crew to fly wherever and I’m good. But at the end of the day, boy, I wish I owned the masters to “What’s Luv.” Boy I wish I owned the masters to “Lean Back.” I don’t own no masters. So with this project right here, there’s a lot of passion involved. Everybody wants to see [this project] win. These are the things that make good stories, you know, so I’m excited. We haven’t been seeing you lately with Tony Sunshine, Remy Ma, and the other Terror Squad members, and I know you had some friction with Remy not too long ago. What’s going on with the rest of the camp? We’re all good. Tony’s almost finished with his album. Tony is so talented; he’s a superstar. Record labels sleep on him because he is a Latino doing black music. We just recently signed a new deal with him on Terror Squad/UBO. We just brought him down here [to Miami] to work with Scott [Storch]. His album is like 80% done. Remy is about to go back in the studio. Me and Remy argue all the time behind the scenes, and it just so happened that she argued publicly. But it’s all love. She hits me every day. We’re family. She’s signed to Terror Squad. She’s about to work on her next album. I just think she was misinformed. Remy’s definitely the best female artist out there and her album was incredible, so she should’ve sold two or three million records. Because of her and her project, I haven’t spoken to Steve Rifkind in maybe a year now. I can’t really do business with Universal no more because I’m passionate about my artists and my family. I had to tell the chairman of Universal to suck my dick, cause it was just too much of me fightin’ for her. I know how to set up records; I know when a record label is behind the artist. They wasn’t and they kept lying to me. What exactly did you feel the label did wrong with Remy’s album? They didn’t spend the money. In order to promote, you have to spend the money. In order to make records pop at radio, you have to spend $100,000 on Urban, $125,000 on Rhythmic, $100,000 on Pop. Like that Ne-Yo record – that could’ve been the #1 record in the country. [Remy’s single] “Conceited” could’ve been the #1 record in the country. They never spent the money it took. Basically they threw her album out there [off the Terror Squad name] and Remy fans had to go find it. Did you feel that it was the same situation with the Terror Squad album? Exactly the same situation. The problem was, that “Lean Back” record was just too big. I sat in on meetings [at Universal] where the radio dudes would say, “We spent no money on this.” And I’m like, damn. “Lean Back” was a freak of nature. It was the biggest, greatest accident in the world. It was just so big that people supported it, and it blew up. So it was the same thing with the Terror Squad album. We didn’t have no funds to go on promo tour. It was a lot of the same shit. But at least that album was successful – it sold 600,000 records. The single “Lean Back” went platinum. Everybody was talkin’ about, “Ooohh, it didn’t sell,” but 75