Fat Joe – Jealous Ones Still Envy (J.O.S.E. 2)

Via RapReviews

The two greatest enemies to career success in hip-hop are jealousy and time. Fat Joe has been rapping about the former for over 15 years now, and he’s still here big balling and eating good – possibly better than he ever has in his career. In any field of endeavor, it only takes one envious person turning from jealousy to hatred to cause tragedy, but hip-hop artists have seen more than their fair share. It may be that intimate knowledge of what haters are thinking that has given Joe a survivor’s edge – the more he’s rapped about it, the more he avoids the urban traps set by everyone who prays for his downfall. Give credit where it’s due – Joe is a crafty, entrepreneurial and resourceful dude.

Eight years ago when Fat Joe released “Jealous Ones Still Envy,” a sequel to 1995’s “Jealous One’s Envy,” Joe was in the unenviable position of carrying his entire label on his back. As RR contributor Mr. S noted at the time Big Pun was dead, Cuban Link and Triple Seis had left, and there was nobody left on the roster with any star power OTHER than Joe. As a soloist Fat Joe had been hit and miss up to that point, though he had started hitting his stride around “Don Cartagena” in 1998 – ironically in part BECAUSE he had the aforementioned rappers to help push him to be a better artist and vice versa. You know the old saying – steel sharpens steel. Fortunately for Joe, even without his comrades, that steel was still sharp in 2001 – perhaps inspired in part by the memory of Big Pun. Remarkably it stayed sharp for many years to come. Even on 2005’s “All or Nothing” Joe was still one of the hardest hitting rappers in New York, showing an adept ability to craft cinematic gangster tales and match them with top notch beats.

We did mention that the two greatest enemies of a rapper’s are jealousy and time in the opening paragraph though. The mere act of surviving time for so long breeds an enemy less deadly than jealous but more insidious – complacency. As long as you keep selling on each record you put out, why worry? When your records stop selling and you wake up to the fact you lost touch, it’s too late. Your audience has already moved on. Even though you’re not dead, your career is. That’s the point you have to go on the nostalgia circuit, peddling your past success to an aging audience of fans mixed with a group of hipsters who think stuff older than they are must be cool. If you’re lucky you get a career boost from a VH1 documentary, or one of today’s hot rappers has you cameo on a song, but opportunities to cash in come fewer and farther between. Far too often nobody around a rapper in their camp has the sense to warn them they’re falling off – they’re too busy enjoying the gravy train to think it will stop either. You can’t let time pass you by.

TOTAL Vibes: 6 of 10

FULL REVIEW HERESimilar Posts:

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Via RapReviews The two greatest enemies to career success in hip-hop are jealousy and time. Fat Joe has been rapping about the former for over 15 years now, and he’s still here big balling and eating good – possibly better than he ever has in his career. In any field of endeavor, it only takes one [...]

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