The Book of Jose

Informationen zum Autor Fat Joe is a rapper, actor, and entrepreneur from the birthplace of hip-hop, the Bronx. He released his first solo album, Represent , in 1993, and founded the record label Terror Squad. Fat Joe is perhaps best known for his platinum-selling album Jealous Ones Still Envy (J.O.S.E.) and hits like "Lean Back" with Terror Squad, "What's Luv?" featuring Ashanti and Ja Rule, and "All the Way Up" with Remy Ma, French Montana, and Dre. Shaheem Reid is a journalist and industry mover. His career in hip hop spans over two decades. Highlights include reporting at MTV, Vibe , and XXL ; serving as the president of Busta Rhymes Conglomerate record label; and launching Polaris, the first Black-owned, free-ad supporting streaming channel, in 2021. Klappentext Grammy-nominated, multi-platinumselling artist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist Fat Joe pulls back the curtain on his larger-than-life persona in this gritty, intimate memoir about growing up in the South Bronx and finding his voice through music. An adrenaline rush . . . buckle up and lean back. Spin Fat Joe is a hip-hop legend, but this is not a tale of celebrity; it is the story of Joseph Cartagena, a kid who came of age in the South Bronx during its darkest years of drugs, violence, and abandonment, and how he navigated that traumatizing landscape until he foundthrough art, friendship, luck, and willa rocky path to a different life. Joe is born into a sprawling Puerto Rican and Cuban family in the projects of the South Bronx. From infancy his life is threatened by violence, and by the time he starts middle school, he is faced with the grim choice that defined a generation: to become predator or prey. Soon Joe and his crew dominate the streets, but he finds his true love among the park jams where the Bronx's wild energy takes musical form. His identity splits in two: a hustler roaming record stores, looking for beats; and a budding rapper whose violent rep rings in the streets. As Joe's day-to-day life becomes more fraught with betrayal, addiction, and death, until he himself is shot and almost killed, he gravitates toward the music that gives him both a voice to tell the stories of his young life and the tools he needs to create a new one. The challenges never stopbut neither does Joe. This memoir, written in Joe's own intensely compelling voice, moves with the momentum of pulp fiction, but underneath the tragicomedy and riveting tales of the streets and the industry is a thought-provoking story about a generation of survivors raised in warlike conditionsthe life-and-death choices they had to make, the friends they lost and mourned, and the glittering lives they created from the ruins. Leseprobe Chapter 1 The Paper Trail The streets crowned me The Realest Walking the Earth. I earned it! Muthaf***as have been trying to kill me my entire life in one way or another. I've been shot multiple times in front of my mother. When I was just ten, a grown man named Papi Loco wrongfully accused me of trying to kill his infant daughter by throwing batteries from the roof of Forest Houses projects in the Bronx, and then pummeled me until I was bloody and had a concussion. When I was a young teen, a street don tried to scare me to death by threatening to stick my entire arm in a meat grinder. The police have done their best to beat me into oblivion. When that didn't work, crooked cops tried to frame me for murder so I could do life in prison. Through it all, though, I never folded. People said it was a suicide mission when I went head-to-head with a gangster known for butchering adults and setting infants on fire. I squared up with the Feds when they stepped to me, and just when I thought shit was sweet, some of my best friends and family died or went to jail or betrayed me. My name is Fat Joe, aka Joey Cra...

Auteur

Fat Joe is a rapper, actor, and entrepreneur from the birthplace of hip-hop, the Bronx. He released his first solo album, Represent, in 1993, and founded the record label Terror Squad. Fat Joe is perhaps best known for his platinum-selling album Jealous Ones Still Envy (J.O.S.E.) and hits like "Lean Back" with Terror Squad, "What's Luv?" featuring Ashanti and Ja Rule, and "All the Way Up" with Remy Ma, French Montana, and Dre.

Shaheem Reid is a journalist and industry mover. His career in hip hop spans over two decades. Highlights include reporting at MTV, Vibe, and XXL; serving as the president of Busta Rhymes Conglomerate record label; and launching Polaris, the first Black-owned, free-ad supporting streaming channel, in 2021.

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**Grammy-nominated, multi-platinum–selling artist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist Fat Joe pulls back the curtain on his larger-than-life persona in this gritty, intimate memoir about growing up in the South Bronx and finding his voice through music.

“An adrenaline rush . . . buckle up and lean back.”—Spin

Fat Joe is a hip-hop legend, but this is not a tale of celebrity; it is the story of Joseph Cartagena, a kid who came of age in the South Bronx during its darkest years of drugs, violence, and abandonment, and how he navigated that traumatizing landscape until he found—through art, friendship, luck, and will—a rocky path to a different life.

Joe is born into a sprawling Puerto Rican and Cuban family in the projects of the South Bronx. From infancy his life is threatened by violence, and by the time he starts middle school, he is faced with the grim choice that defined a generation: to become predator or prey. Soon Joe and his crew dominate the streets, but he finds his true love among the park jams where the Bronx’s wild energy takes musical form. His identity splits in two: a hustler roaming record stores, looking for beats; and a budding rapper whose violent rep rings in the streets. As Joe’s day-to-day life becomes more fraught with betrayal, addiction, and death, until he himself is shot and almost killed, he gravitates toward the music that gives him both a voice to tell the stories of his young life and the tools he needs to create a new one. The challenges never stop—but neither does Joe.

This memoir, written in Joe’s own intensely compelling voice, moves with the momentum of pulp fiction, but underneath the tragicomedy and riveting tales of the streets and the industry is a thought-provoking story about a generation of survivors raised in warlike conditions—the life-and-death choices they had to make, the friends they lost and mourned, and the glittering lives they created from the ruins.