Fat Joe has declared that, while he may have earned his stripes in the game, he’s not quite ready for people to start calling him ‘Unc.’
The Bronx rapper made the declaration during one of his popular Instagram Live streams on Wednesday (February 22).
“Do me a favor, man. Don’t ‘unc’ me,” Joe began before explaining that there are some titles that he will accept as a sign of respect.
“You could do OG. ‘Yo wassup, OG?’ You know this, that,” he said. “Don’t ‘unc’ me. You know they try to ‘unc’ me. Until, you know, you fly and smelling better…”
Fat Joe asks people not to call him "unc" 😂https://t.co/52WCdDsvQr pic.twitter.com/yIVDEejcls
— HipHopDX (@HipHopDX) February 23, 2023
Joey Crack wasn’t always ready to embrace his wisdom though. Way before his ‘OG’ days, the Bronx native apparently lost a $20 million deal with Jordan Brand because he couldn’t get past his beef with 50 Cent in the mid 2000s.
In an excerpt from his memoir, The Book of Jose, Joe pinpointed the collapse of the deal to the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards — where he and 50 Cent exchanged shots in full view of the audience.
Joe threw the first jab by thanking G-Unit for the heavy “police protection” inside Miami’s American Airlines Arena while presenting Missy Elliott with the award for Best Hip Hop Video. 50 fired back during his main show performance with Tony Yayo and Mobb Deep, calling Fat Joe a “pussy boy” and a “fuck boy.”
But what fans inside the arena and at home didn’t see was 50 Cent and G-Unit taunting Fat Joe off camera.
“During the commercial break beforehand, 50 Cent got out of his seat and started walking the house,” Joe wrote in his memoir. “He was really trying to antagonize me as I was standing there waiting to speak on the mic but I wasn’t trying to pay him no mind. Then 50 actually came onstage for a few seconds. He stood several feet away from me. I was saying to myself, ‘Okay, we’re about to fight. We’re about to get it on right here at the VMAs.’”
He continued: “When the show came back on — this is live TV, mind you — he went back to his seat. The G-Unit started yelling at me while I’m reading off the teleprompter. The Terror Squad, offstage in the wings, started barking back. That’s when I dropped my jab: ‘I feel safe with all the police protection courtesy of G-Unit.’”
Joey Crack went on to recall G-Unit members confronting him and Terror Squad as they left the arena, but police were able to separate the two crews and avoid a fight breaking out.
Nevertheless, the damage was already done as Joe later received a phone call from Michael Jordan himself calling off their lucrative collaboration.
“I was supposed to be the first artist ever to collaborate with Jordan Brand,” Joe wrote. “I’ve always rocked the most Jordans, always had the 172 flyest, most exclusive Jordans out of any celeb. No one can compete with my sneaker collection.
“Me and Michael Jordan are actual friends,” he continued. “I met with him six times going over designs for the Fat Joe Jordan. Some of those meetings were literally just me and him, brainstorming, bouncing ideas off each other. But after the VMAs, Mike deaded the deal. That was it.”
That wasn’t the only way in which his feud with 50 Cent cost Fat Joe in the long run.
“I lost about $20 million by not getting that deal,” he explained. “I lost out on other endorsements too. Promoters definitely didn’t book me and 50 Cent on the same shows. Everybody had to keep us separated. But as fate would have it, after the VMAs, we didn’t see each other again in person for almost a decade.”
Fat Joe and 50 Cent eventually buried the hatchet at the 2012 BET Hip Hop Awards, with the tragic death of their mutual friend, music executive Chris Lighty, inspiring a peace treaty between the rap rivals.
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