December 19, 2022
Rapper Fat Joe debuts with an unflinching portrait of his rise to fame set against the backdrop of 1970s and ’80s New York City. Joe recounts his youth in the South Bronx projects, where he grew from a rambunctious loudmouth into a ruthless gangster after being bullied by his street-savvy peers. “At the start of puberty,” he writes, “I was way more concerned with getting revenge and levying brutality than the average boy.” Joe and cowriter Reid detail the rapper and his peers’ youthful criminal exploits—mainly drug dealing and violence—with the enthusiasm of a good boast track, then cut that slickness with genuine pathos, as when Joe reflects on the ravages of his drug game: “The disease, the violence, the incarceration: We didn’t invent any of it. But it ripped us apart.” Joe is a charismatic narrator who owns his faults even as he celebrates their spoils, chronicling the ups and downs of his lifestyle, including being shot when he was 17 and signing with his first record label in the early ’90s. As well he makes clear his admiration for musical contemporaries Nas and Jay-Z, writing breathlessly about their talent and influence on his music. The narrative is largely unstructured, but that anarchic energy enhances the authenticity. This is a must-read for hip-hop fans.