You establish yourself as one of the most credible emcees in the industry, garnering respect and admiration from your peers and are coming off a multi-platinum album whose top song once tallied 13,000 radio spins in a single week; time to sit back, relax and relish in the success, right? Not if your name is Fat Joe.
The Crack Man, a.k.a. Don Cartagena, a.k.a. Fat Joe recently released his fifth album, “Loyalty,” after experiencing great commercial success with “Jealous One’s Still Envy (J.O.S.E.),” a sequel to Joe’s critically acclaimed 1995 album “Jealous Ones Envy.”
The strategy to Cartagena’s first-ever multi-platinum album was to bring in commercial listeners with some catchy party/sexy type tracks “We Thuggin’ (featuring R. Kelly),” “What’s Luv? (featuring Ja Rule and Ashanti).” But, he maintained his same street-savvy, gang-related aesthetic approach that reflects his experiences as a numbers runner for numerous gangs as a youth in the New York City area with tracks such as “My Lifestyle” and “He’s Not Real.”
The approach wasn’t broke, so Cartagena did not attempt to fix it.
“Loyalty” follows the same approach, using “Crush Tonight (with Ginuwine)” as a sultry jump-off for all the women out there, and buttressed that with the introspective “Life Goes On.” Listen to “Turn Me On,” and one get the impression that all the commercial success has gone straight to Cartagena’s 400-plus pound frame.
The opening track, “Take a look at my life,” completely shuts down that theory. The song opens up with the words, “Birds chirpin’/N*ggas walkin’ their dogs, watering their flowers/That’s my neighborhood? F*** No!”
If one needs another reminder as to just how thorough the self-proclaimed, “One who mothered this rap sh*t” is about his persona, one need only to listen to the slam-dancing “We run this sh*t (featuring Charlie Rock LD),” where he decrees that if “Anybody want beef with the D-O-N/Guaranteed it will be your end.”
With production and appearances by the likes of DITC’s Buckwild, Teflon, Armageddon, Prospect and Remy Martin, “Loyalty” does not disappoint.
If you are a listener looking for a wide topic base with a constant focus on the realities involved with living the life of a hustler, this is definitely the album to cop.
