Fat Joe

Fat Joe is one of the biggest players in hip-hop today - literally and figuratively. The portly Puerto Rican platinum rap star (also known as Fat Joe da Gangsta and Joey Crack) has released eight full-length studio albums to date, most of them on his own personal record label, Terror Squad Entertainment. In addition to his career in the industry, Fat Joe has dabbled in a number of other business ventures, including a New York City... More >

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Fat Joe is one of the biggest players in hip-hop today - literally and figuratively. The portly Puerto Rican platinum rap star (also known as Fat Joe da Gangsta and Joey Crack) has released eight full-length studio albums to date, most of them on his own personal record label, Terror Squad Entertainment. In addition to his career in the industry, Fat Joe has dabbled in a number of other business ventures, including a New York City barbershop and a fashion line, FJ560. To call Fat Joe anything less than a big deal would be an understatement.

Born Joseph Cartagena in The Bronx, Joe - who takes his nickname "Fat Joe" from a 1930's mafia boss, Joseph Pinzolo - was introduced to hip-hop at an early age by local acts like the Furious Five and 4 1. A talented rhymesmith himself, he earned his stripes performing locally with the NYC Diggin in the Crates Crew (named after the act of digging through secondhand record stores to find records to sample) and with his label partner Big Pun before signing to Relativity Records (Three 6 Mafia, Common) in the early 1990's. Fat Joe released two albums on Relativity (Represent and Jealous One's Envy) before catching the attention of scouts from Atlantic Records, who added Fat Joe and his Terror Squad clique to their roster in 1998.

Joe's next four albums on Atlantic proved to be commercially successful, with his 2001 album Jealous Ones Still Envy (J.O.S.E.) peaking at #2 on the Billboard 200 and moving over 1.2 million copies domestically. Throughout his tenure at Atlantic Fat Joe dropped a number of hits, notable among them "What's Luv?" and "Lean Back". Fat Joe's career during the early 2000's is also notable for his feud with fellow NYC rapper 50 Cent; the pair exchanged a number of diss tracks and almost started a riot at the 2005 MTV Music Video Awards in Miami. The yet-unresolved dispute between Fat Joe and 50 Cent continues to create tension in the hip-hop world today.

After departing from Atlantic Records Fat Joe signed to EMI-backed Imperial Records in 2006, releasing his first album Me, Myself, & I on the label in 2006. Me, Myself, & I was followed by his most recent album The Elephant in the Room in 2008, though The Elephant in the Room failed to sell as well as his earlier efforts. Some of Fat Joe's most recent hits include "Make It Rain", "We Takin' Over", and "I Won't Tell".

From Discogs:

Rapper.Born: August 19, 1970, Bronx, New York, USA.Raised in the South Bronx area of New York.

From Lastfm:

Fat Joe (born Joseph Cartagena on August 19, 1970) is a American rapper of Puerto Rican and Cuban heritage. Born and brought up in the Bronx, Joe was popular in the large underground hip hop scene during the early and mid-1990s. During this period, Joe was affiliated with KRS-One - there are pictures online at KRS-One's Temple of Hiphop site showing the pair drawing graffiti ("bombing") together. He is also the most widely known member of the D.I.T.C. Crew (the "Digging in the Crates Crew"), along with smaller hip-hoppers such as Diamond D, Lord Finesse, O.

Read more about Fat Joe on Last.fm.

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From Wikipedia:

Joseph Cartagena (August 19, 1970), better known by his stage name Fat Joe, is an American rapper signed to Imperial Records, CEO of Terror Squad Entertainment, and member of musical groups D.I.T.C. and Terror Squad.

Fat Joe's first album was Represent, released in 1993, followed by Jealous One's Envy in 1995. From 1998 to 2006, he was signed to Atlantic Records, releasing four albums under the label, Don Cartagena in 1998, Jealous Ones Still Envy (J.O.S.E.) in 2001, Loyalty in 2002, and All or Nothing in 2005. Around the release of All or Nothing, Fat Joe became involved in a highly publicized feud with another New York City-based rapper 50 Cent, who attacked Fat Joe in his song "Piggy Bank". His most popular song in which he performed was his Remy Ma duet "Lean Back" with Terror Squad. The song was a number-one hit in the summer of 2004.

Starting in 2006, when his album Me, Myself, & I was released, Fat Joe was signed to Imperial Records, which distributes through Terror Squad Entertainment. His follow up album wasThe Elephant in the Room, which was released in 2008; Jealous Ones Still Envy 2 (J.O.S.E. 2), the sequel to Jealous Ones Still Envy (J.O.S.E.), was released in October 2009. His tenth album The Darkside Vol. 1 was released on July 27, 2010.

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