The Book of Jose: a Memoir by FAT JOE & Shaheem Reid

Author:FAT JOE & Shaheem Reid [FAT JOE & Reid, Shaheem]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2022-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

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IN 1998, we engineered another major breakthrough for Pun, when we sampled Dr. Dre and Snoop’s “Deep Cover” for our own song “Twinz (Deep Cover 98).” What can you say about the 1992 original that hasn’t already been said? It’s one of the greatest songs in hip-hop ever, with Dre and Snoop trading rhymes over Dre’s propulsive production. It was Snoop’s debut, and one of the greatest debuts in rap history—no exaggeration.

I wanted Pun to have that type of impact as we ushered him to greet the masses. Up to that point, everything he’d been on was East Coast–centric. We had established him in our home base, but I wanted his reach to expand, which is why we chose an iconic beat from the West Coast.

Pun said his most iconic lines ever on that record too: “Dead in the middle of Little Italy little did we know / That we riddled two middlemen who didn’t do diddily.”

It was a big fight convincing Pun to put those bars in his verse. See, Pun was such a jovial dude, he would say these tongue twisters all day long and laugh. He would just out of the blue say, “Dead in the middle of Little Italy,” all the time.

“Pun, put that shit in your rhyme man. That shit is hard,” I insisted.

“You’re gonna have niggas laughing at me,” he resisted.

“Twinz” was an impeccable follow-up to “Off the Books,” which dropped in late June 1997. “Off the Books” was a Beatnuts single that started off underground, then charted on Billboard and blew up to be a major club banger. Pun batted leadoff and absolutely obliterated the song’s signature beat with its infectious flute trill. That was only the second time he was featured on an album, and it was the first radio hit Pun rapped on.

Like me and Big L, Pun relished posse records. He loved to get on songs with the best and try to outshine them. On records like N.O.R.E.’s “Banned from T.V.” or my joint “John Blaze,” Pun was rapping with everyone from Nas to Jadakiss and just stealing the show. It was friendly competition, but on the low Pun was trying to decapitate everyone.

But out of everyone, Pun had most wanted to collaborate with The Notorious B.I.G. Can you imagine what that record would have sounded like? Those two were so versatile, they could have spun out some hilarious, action-packed narrative, or just gone the lyrical onslaught route and killed the track going bar for bar. It would have been huge.

Pun was a huge fan of Biggie, and the admiration was mutual. Right when Big had finished his double LP, Life After Death, in 1997, he called me. I was traveling to a show, driving from NY to VA on I-95, and Biggie was in L.A. doing promo for the project. Life After was dropping in less than three weeks, on March 25, 1997, and would go on to sell more than eleven million copies. Big told me that he’d heard some of Pun’s work and loved him as an MC.

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