Fat Joe Went on Tony Yayo's Show and Untangled Eminem, 50 Cent and Ja Rule in One Sitting

The Lean Back remix, Candy Shop and "New York" all happened inside about a year. Fat Joe finally walked through them in order, across the table from G-Unit.

The headline line from Fat Joe's visit to The Real Report, the podcast hosted by Tony Yayo and Uncle Murda, published Monday, September 21, is a denial: his verse on Ja Rule's "New York" was not a shot at 50 Cent. What makes it worth more than a headline is the chair across from him. Yayo was in G-Unit when that beef was live, and Joe was telling him, to his face, that he was never the enemy.

Fat Joe: "Somebody was trying to ask me was I dissing 50 Cent in 'New York.' The answer was no." (at 1:10:21)

His evidence was not an argument. It was a beat.

The "Candy Shop" alibi

Joe says he was in the room when Scott Storch made the "Candy Shop" beat, and that Storch kept checking whether he minded 50 having it.

Fat Joe: "Scott Storch called me 30, 20, 30 times. 'Yo, you sure you don't want the beat?' [...] I got no problem with 50 Cent." (at 1:10:46)

Fat Joe: "I had no problem with 50 Cent. I said, 'Yo, give him the [...] beat.'" (at 1:11:29)

Some coverage turned that into Joe simply "passing" on a finished song. His version is bigger: "I made Candy Shop with Scott Storch" (at 1:10:25), adding that without 50 it "wouldn't have been 'Candy Shop.' It would have been something else." The official credits list 50 Cent and Storch as writers and Storch as producer, so treat the co-creation claim as Joe's. But it is not new, and it is not his alone. Storch said on Drink Champs in 2022 that he was originally making the beat for Joe, and when asked if Joe is a writer on the record, answered, "Yeah, technically."

"Candy Shop" went to No. 1. It sits at 1.38 billion Spotify streams as of Kworb's September 24 update. Joe could have kept it. That is his whole point.

How "New York" happened

The chapter that promises "How 'New York' Sparked the 50 Cent Beef" (at 1:14:26) is shorter than its title. Cool & Dre played Joe the beat first, he says, then came back and told him they had offered it to Ja Rule. "Same type of [thing] with the 'Candy Shop,'" Joe said. He gave his blessing, then jumped on the record anyway.

Fat Joe: "His beef was with Ja Rule. Ja Rule is my friend." (at 1:14:47)

And, a minute later, the concession: jumping on that song was "the start of a beef," one he guessed on the show lasted around seven years. Intent aside, he knew exactly which side of the line "New York" stood on. The song was a single from Ja's R.U.L.E. in 2004, the peak of the war that also produced "Back Down," whose original version just surfaced.

50's reply came on The Massacre in March 2005. "Piggy Bank" went after Ja, Jadakiss and Joe by name. It was never a single and still charted on the Hot 100. It is one of the records that keeps turning up whenever the best-diss-song lists come back around.

Where Eminem comes in

This is the thread nobody tied together. In July 2004, a few months before "New York," Joe's "Lean Back" remix arrived with Lil Jon, Mase and Eminem, the man who signed 50 Cent and had spent 2003 on records aimed at Ja Rule. Joe says he would never have asked.

Fat Joe: "I would have never did 'Lean Back' remix with Eminem and Mase if it wasn't for Khaled. Khaled was like, 'Yo, you got to get the white boy. You could do it.' I said, 'I can't get him.' [...] I would have never had the balls to get him on there." (at 1:06:59)

To be clear, the Khaled credit is not a new revelation. Joe told Rolling Stone a version of it in 2023, saying "Lean Back" was recorded in a studio at Khaled's house and that Khaled told him, "You could get Em." What is new is the backstory he gave this time. Joe met Khaled back in his "Flow Joe" days, at a hip-hop convention DJ battle run by the late Clark Kent, where Khaled turned up with vinyl of Joe's album two months before it came out. Joe ran up on him about it, and they became friends. Big Pun, he says, would drive to Miami just to play Khaled new music. Joe also noted that Mase had retired by then and came back for the remix.

Yayo had his own Khaled memory from the other side of the beef. Bringing his 2005 single "So Seductive" to radio, he said (at 1:03:56), he couldn't get it played in Miami, because Khaled ran the radio there and G-Unit was at war with Joe.

The remix sat at 113.8 million Spotify streams as of Kworb's September 19 update.

The Jordan that never happened

Near the end (at 1:30:19), the beef shows up on Joe's balance sheet. He says he designed a signature Jordan with Michael Jordan himself, meeting him around seven times, and then the 2005 MTV VMAs in Miami happened, with G-Unit and Terror Squad trading shots in the room. The call came the next morning.

Fat Joe: "Big Joe, you know I'm not into none of this controversy, but maybe we revisit." (at 1:31:35)

"To this day, I ain't get a Jordan," he added. He told Complex in 2022 that the lost deal cost him about $20 million. Jordan later made it up to him, Joe says, by clearing the way for his sneaker store.

Set to 1:04:21, the Khaled chapter. The Eminem story is at 1:06:59, "Candy Shop" at 1:10:21, "New York" at 1:14:26.

The ledger

Put it in order and the 2004-05 story reads differently from how it was fought. Within roughly a year, Joe put Eminem, 50's label boss, on his biggest remix; gave his blessing to the beat that became 50's No. 1 "Candy Shop"; rapped on Ja Rule's "New York"; and got called out on "Piggy Bank" for it. By his own accounting he was on 50's side of the ledger twice before he landed on the other side once.

Twenty-one years later, he said it into a G-Unit microphone, and nobody at the table argued.