Why Fat Joe’s crew wanted to “beat up” Kanye West: “Fuck out of here”
Fat Joe collaborated with Kanye West in 2012 on ‘Pride N Joy’, an all-star single also featuring Mos Def, Busta Rhymes, Jadakiss, DJ Khaled, Miguel and Roscoe Dash. However, collaborating with Ye wasn’t the easiest process.
During an interview with GQ, the Bronx rapper revealed Kanye made him re-record his verse around 300 times — just to get one word right. Joe was in the studio with Ye, whose audacity caused Joe’s crew to want to fight him.
”’Pride N Joy’ was a hit. It was coming right after ‘Another Round,’” Joe said. “Rico Love had the hot hand. Kanye heard it and was like, ‘Yo, I want to do something to it.’ At the time, Kanye could not lose. He made me do my same verse—like say it over and over—300 times. My guys wanted to beat him up. They’re like, ‘Yo, come on, fuck outta here with that.’”
Revealing the word he wanted him to say in a particular way, he recalled, “He’s like ‘cul-der-sac.’ He would leave, he’d come back. ‘Cul-der-sac.’”
Despite the marathon studio session, Joe admitted it was all worth it in the end and he was grateful to have the opportunity to work with Kanye. “I loved the finished product,” he said. “I love how my verses turned out. He was a tough one. It’s an honour to work with him. He’s my favourite rapper of the last half of my career—and the only guy I compare my music to.”
Speaking to Power 106, Joe claimed that Ye was surprised to find out that he wrote his own lyrics, with Ye believing he was a “mafia don” who received raps from people.
“I sat down to do a record with Kanye West, we did the joint ‘Pride N Joy’, and when I pulled out my paper, and started writing, he was like, ‘You write music?’ This was five years ago,” he said in 2019. “He was like, ‘You rap?’ I was like, ‘What do you mean? We’re making a song together.”
He recalled Ye saying, “‘Oh, I just thought you were like a mafia don that they come give you different raps and you chose which one you say.’ I’m like, ‘Get the fuck out of here. I’ve been rapping my whole life. What the hell are you talking about.’ I never had no help.”
‘Pride N Joy’ has over two million streams on Spotify, with the music video boasting over three million YouTube views. The song was produced by Bink!, with Joe claiming that the record had to be mixed eight times by West before its release. It dropped a couple of years after his The Darkside Vol. 1 album, with his next solo album, The World Changed on Me, taking another 14 years to be released.