Five and Done: Fat Joe

Five and Done; quick questions to keep it moving before a full fledged interview on this here site. We caught up with Fat Joe while he was in NYC’s Chung King Studios, playing his new album, The Elephant in the Room, set to drop March 11. “The room is Hip-Hop,” said Joe Crack regarding the album’s title, while also going as far to say, “My new gimmick is trying to make street records big.” With the album featuring production from Danja Hands, LV and DJ Premier, Joe kept his word. Look out for an album preview soon, but for now, here’s The Bronx bred rapper’s take on five or so topics. On his new gimmick—making street records big…“You know when you hear an album, especially a New York artist’s album, we love the underground s**t but it don’t sound big, like a movie. Ya know what I’m saying? We try to take all of our songs and turn them into movies; an anthem. It’s not thin. I don’t know if I can desribe it better to you. Just take it and make it bigger. You get a guy’s album and he’s just rhyming to some samples and it just ain’t going anywhere. We want to take street s**t that n****s love and turn them into anthems.” On balancing the wants of fans that like the singing (read: lead single “I Won’t Tell” f/ J. Holiday) versus those that want hardcore ish…“Give them a hell of a hit record out the box. And then you give them a “300” and a “The Crack House” and everybody…the drugs is on the street. There’s nothing you can do about it.” On Big Pun still not getting his proper due…“He doesn’t. He’s the best lyricist ever in the game of Hip-Hop, if you ask me. If you put him on paper, black & white, he’s the best lyricist in the game ever. Honestly, I don’t know what else to tell y’all. I hear his s**t, and I was there when he recorded it and I still don’t know half the s**t he said…”I ain’t saying cats is biting his flow, I’m just saying a lot of cats is influenced by his flow. I never even wanted to spit that flow because I didn’t want people to say I was biting or trying to be like Pun. Then I seen it so accepted, I might as well go in.” On splitting home bases between The BX and MI Yayo…“I live in New York, and Miami as well. Two weeks here, two weeks there. I love Miami but New York’s my home. [Living in Miami] allows me to be free. If you notice I make different kind of music because I be out there. Here [NYC] I feel like we all trapped in a bubble up here man. It’s repetitious. Turn on the mixshow tonight, turn it on tomorrow, every n***a saying the same s###, they’re not expanding, they’re not making it crazier. So I gotta go down there to just feel free.” On whether he would go back to a major label…“Never, no way, are you kidding me?! You want me to go back to slavery? Are you nuts? It’s a long story short man; I sold two million records on a major label and turned around twice, not once, twice and never seen a royalty in my life. There’s n****s that sell four million and don’t see a royalty. It’s funny math when you f**k with the majors. It’s real funny math. They give you 18 points [but] every dollar they ever spent—marketing, whatever or their event—comes out of your 18 points. What happens to the 82 points?! So then the artists turns around he sells a million records, they made six and a half million dollars off of him. And he’s lucky if they give him a half a million as an advance towards his new album, which is really half a million off the six and a half million they just made off the n***a. Please!”