Between Fat Joe and Ja Rule, I don’t know who has worse business sense.
Everyone and their mother knows that, in addition to being the Reek to 50 Cent’s Ramsay Bolton, Ja Rule was front-and-center of that Fyre Festival disaster. So complete was the destruction from the Fyre Festival that its co-founder, Billy McFarland, is currently sitting in a federal penitentiary, and the phrase has since been used to describe festivals and concerts that are so disastrous that not even Black Jesus Himself can save them. (Like the “MobMovieCon,” for instance. Ice-T, what were you thinking, man?)
Then there’s Fat Joe.
In addition to (allegedly) still holding on to Big Pun’s royalties — so much so that Liza Rios, Pun’s widow, frequently takes to Instagram to drag Joey Crack’s slimmed-down tuchas from here to Teaneck to this day — the man born Joseph Cartagena is a proud spokesperson for a world-infamous pyramid scheme.
“This unbelievable YouTube video shows Joseph “Fat Joe” Cartagena speaking at an international convention for MarketAmerica, the parent company for Shop.com, a seemingly innocent website that sells thousands of everyday products like vitamins, groceries, safari hats, laser printers, and Hunger Games Halloween costumes,” reports The Hundreds. “The goal of Joe’s video, however, is not to sell you these individual products, but to sell you on becoming a “shop consultant,” someone who, beyond the product sales, promotes the website and relies mostly on signing up others to join in as “consultants,” thus creating a very familiar pyramid, where the earned money trickles down based on the recruitment. Also, you have to pay a set-up fee, a yearly fee, and a monthly fee to sell the items.”
*in my Cardi B voice* That’s suspicious. That’s weird.
We may as well call this Verzuz “the battle of the scam artists.”