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Earlier than the platinum hit data, Grammy Award nomination and acclaim, Fats Joe was Joseph Antonio Cartagena from the Bronx. In his new memoir, “The Guide of Jose,” he particulars the toll of his upbringing, psychological well being and turning into a rapper.
He described his childhood to CBS Information as lovely, saying, “We did not don’t have anything. We did not don’t have any cash. We grew up on welfare. We grew up within the initiatives however we did not know what we had been lacking.”
Born in New York Metropolis’s South Bronx to Puerto Rican and Cuban dad and mom, Cartegena mentioned he struggled to slot in as an obese child with blonde hair and inexperienced eyes. He recalled getting beat up “each single day” whereas rising up.
In an excerpt from “The Guide of Jose,” Cartegena defined how his actuality impacted him.
“I sat in my bed room with hatred festering,” he wrote. “My coronary heart turned black. I now not cared about anyone. I needed to inflict as a lot violence and worry as I may on anybody who stood in my path. It did not matter whether or not they had been good or unhealthy.”
He recalled patrolling neighborhoods within the Eighties, which included robbing and intimidating neighborhood members.
“Once I pray at evening to God or I give again to the neighborhood, I do not know if I could make up for the ache I gave to the neighborhood,” Cartegena mentioned.
However nonetheless, the rapper mentioned he “was an incredible child” who would have maybe turn into a physician, lawyer or pastor had he grown up underneath completely different circumstances.
“I got here with a pure coronary heart, with coronary heart,” he mentioned. “It was the streets and the atmosphere that modified me into that particular person.”
By the early Nineties, Cartegena’s talent with the mic was beginning to break via and he started spending extra time within the recording studio along with his first hit in 1993, “Stream Joe.” He mentioned he had “modified [his] life utterly to get within the music enterprise,” drawing on early recommendation he obtained on the time from rapper LL Cool J.
“I used to be like, ‘Yo, the way you get this?’ He mentioned, ‘That is simple. I do the identical factor you do. I simply rap to the ladies and make industrial hits and also you simply rap to the gangsters on the road,” Cartegena mentioned of an encounter with LL Cool J. “That sparked an concept in my mind that was like, ‘Oh, we gotta change the sport up.’ And round that point is the place I first found Massive Pun.”
Christopher Rios, also referred to as Massive Pun, was one of many greatest names in hip-hop within the late Nineties. He and Cartegena had been a part of the Terror Squad, teaming up for a variety of billboard smash hits. However in February of 2000, Rios suffered a deadly coronary heart assault at 28-years-old.
Cartegana mentioned he then fell right into a deep melancholy, which he wrestled with for years.
“I knew I used to be in hassle. Like huge hassle,” he mentioned. “…I stored reliving this and reliving this and reliving this and reliving this and I used to be simply in such a darkish place.”
He mentioned he labored via his grief via remedy and would later go on to register a string of Billboard hits.
Now, at 52, Cartegana mirrored on his profession in rap, saying that it’s “a harmful occupation.”
“It is a very catch-22 state of affairs,” he mentioned.
Citing rapper 21 Savage, Cartegana requested “What do you do? You grew up on this neighborhood. You turn into wealthy out of nowhere. They supported you. Do you permit the hood and have the entire hood hate you perpetually? Or do you keep and attempt to look out for them as a result of a few of them are going to do the incorrect factor.”
For Cartegana, he nonetheless operates within the South Bronx to at the present time, working certainly one of New York’s prime sneaker outlets whereas offering a studying heart for native youngsters. He described the shop as “a secure haven for individuals locally.”
“Do not consider individuals telling you that you simply’re nugatory, which you can’t turn into one thing,” he mentioned. “We gotta be there for one another and let these younger kings know, and queens know, that they are beneficial.”
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