They met in the Bronx and had Joe, the youngest of his mom’s four kids. His mother Ruby’s family is from Puerto Rico, and Joe’s father, Ernesto, moved from Cuba.
HE WAS ALWAYS Fat Joey, born in the South Bronx in 1970, three years before the emergence of hip-hop. “Although I’ve gotten health conscious on another level,” he says, “it wouldn’t make sense to change it. Whenever he’s debated a new alias, though, he’s reminded himself that Fat Joe is an entity and a source of pride. But what about that name? He’s made millions off it and inspired confidence in others even as he’s rebuilt himself physically and emotionally. “I want you to be able to see it, smell it,” he says.Īt 52, Fat Joe is entering a new prime of his life while being poised to become an even larger household name. He’s also developing a Starz talk show-executive-produced by Sean “Diddy” Combs and LeBron James’s SpringHill Company-and a one-man show in the style of Mike Tyson or John Leguizamo that Joe promises will be fun, funny, sad, and emotional. Maybe you’ve seen him guest cohosting The Wendy Williams Show or The Drew Barrymore Show. Part of that means continuing to tell stories in ways that excite him and help him understand himself better, too. Joe just wants to stay alive, and he’s altered his daily habits to fit this mindset, transforming his body by focusing on improving his net happiness with more than superficial gains.įat Joe poses for Men’s Health at a studio in Manhattan. I’m livin’ Fat,” is equally unapologetic about his inclination to substitute zucchini for spaghetti and about his favorite: sweet-potato mash topped with Splenda and I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.
These days, the hip-hop stalwart, who once celebrated his undeniable presence with a chorus that consisted mostly of “I’m livin’ Fat, y’all. He’s lost about 215 of that over the past 15 years, first in a giant whoosh and then through more sustained progress, making practical lifestyle tweaks while learning the science of food. At one point, he tipped the scales at 470 pounds. The Book of Jose, the memoir he published last November, is a sobering portrait of survival, which, for Joe, now means being much more mindful about how he lives. He’s more than willing to share just how close to death he’s come and how he had to battle hard to win back his physical and mental health. “You know what I did the other day?”įat Joe loves to joyously reminisce because he knows how many times he could have flamed out over the years-or worse-but has been saved. “Fello still had ’em.” Joe refers to his own home closet as a museum stuffed with “wearable art.” He wants to live long enough to be as literally fresh to death as his uncle Fello was. “For a 90-something-year-old still caring about his sneakers?” Joe says, shaking his head. He’s great at adding just the right amount of gravity or incredulity to his narratives, dazzling listeners with the finest minutiae. The fans who’ve listened to his decades of chart-topping hits, or recently cued up his Instagram Live for one of the regular fireside chats that have earned him the pithy nickname Joprah, all know this trademark vibe. What could have been a brief aside about a relative’s love of footwear becomes an epic retelling in Fat Joe’s world. Fat Joe near his heaviest, at the 1999 Grammys.
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