Fat Joe claims he lost millions due to 50 Cent and Jay-Z
Fat Joe has alleged that his beef with 50 Cent and Jay-Z stopped him from earning millions of dollars in shoe deals.
In the mid-2000s, the Bronx rapper was flying commercially thanks to the hit singles ‘What’s Luv’ and ‘Lean Back’ and almost secured insanely lucrative deals with Air Jordan and Reebok.
During his appearance on Sneaker Shopping alongside Joe and Jada co-host Jadakiss, Joe opened up about how his feuds were costly.
“I was the first rapper with a Jordan sneaker, not only that, designed by Michael Jordan,” he said. “Seven meetings, they had the whole sneaker. Then that shit happened at the MTV Awards.”
Joe dissed 50 on stage at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2005, with the G-Unit rapper calling him a “pussy” later in the night.
The following day, he received a call from a Jordan executive, who told him, “Yo, Big Joe, you know, I’m not with controversy. Maybe we look at this in the future.”
He also claimed he was securing a multi-million dollar deal with Reebok until an executive discovered his feud with Jay-Z, who had already partnered with the company.
“Reebok had approached me and was like, ‘Yo, we want to do a sneaker with you for millions.’ I caught the squeeze play because Hov was over there and 50 Cent,” he said. “They shut it down. They was just like, ‘Yo, we won’t do business with you if you give this guy a sneaker.’ That’s part of the karma. It’s part of the ins and outs. I’ve done it to other guys. It came back to me.”
Just last year, 50 admitted he regretted his long-running beef with Joe because there weren’t any serious issues between them.
“Look, I think we wasted too much time arguing, me and Fat Joe, me and Cam’ron,” he told People. “There’s other guys like Jada, we cleared it up easier. But we wasted time because it was just the competitive nature. It wasn’t like we crossed paths and had real heat for each other.”