I was a diabetic for 16 years, since I was 14. Being that I lost weight, no more diabetes. You don't have to lose your eyesight, cut off your toes, have a stroke, get kidney failure. You just have to lose weight - you know - for most of the diabetes.
— Fat Joe
See, me, I don't run away. During my successes or my failures, I put it on me.
When I first started, I thought I was wack. Lyrically, I thought I was wack. The thing I had over everybody was that I was the realest rapper.
The hip hop industry is most likely owned by gays. I happen to think there's a gay mafia in hip hop. Not rappers - the editorial presidents of magazines, the PDs at radio stations, the people who give you awards at award shows.
As a little kid, I watched hip hop get created. So it's an honour for me to represent the Bronx, the motherland of hip hop.
Everything has to evolve. Music has to go somewhere. That's what keeps it fresh.
I love to eat. If I could eat everything in the world and still be healthy or wouldn't catch a heart attack or stroke, I'd eat everything. I just can't. So I got to watch my health and take care of my family.
Fat Joe ain't out here trying to battle-rap everybody in the world. That's not what I'm about.
Before I was rapping, I was always around the rap game, even though I was in the streets. I would be at all the parties and all the events, and I was pretty hard to miss. I was one of the few Spanish cats sitting there with jewelry on, Dapper Dan suits. It was pretty hard to miss me.
Never get involved with a business that you can't really be hands-on - that if your employees quit, you can't run yourself. If I can't cut hair, why open a barbershop?
To have so many years in the rap industry and so many number one songs, and sold so many millions of records, introduced the world to people like Cool & Dre, DJ Khaled, Pitbull, Rick Ross, Trick Daddy, Remy Ma, Big Pun, Rico Love... I could go on and on. Having been able to influence the rap game for so long is very important to me.
All I know is stars and hits, you know what I mean? I don't just sign a guy because he has a hot record. I sign a guy because he's a star. He's a pillar of the community.
Food is like a legal drug. You can take 50 cents and walk into the store and buy a Twinkie and get high. And it's killing people.
If you really analyze my music, there is a lot of violence in my music because the Bronx, at the era and time I was coming up, was almost equivalent to how a 'Braveheart' or 'Gladiator' movie would be.
I started out in the Apollo Theater. That's where I got my start. I won Amateur Night four weeks in a row.
Man I got so many regrets. The biggest is that Eminem gave me so many demos - six different times he approached me, and I didn't sign him. Shame on me.
I have been Fat Joe since I was a kid. It's always been my name and always will be.
We go after legacies because we just know that, sooner or later, people will understand what we bring to this culture and bring to the game.
