Description

Grammynominated multiplatinumselling artist entrepreneur and philanthropist Fat Joe pulls back the curtain on his largerthanlife 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 backSpin

Fat Joe is a hiphop 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 Bronxs 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 Joes daytoday 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 Joes 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 thoughtprovoking story about a generation of survivors raised in warlike conditionsthe lifeanddeath choices they had to make the friends they lost and mourned and the glittering lives they created from the ruins