Shawn Setaro
[Terror Squad mainstays Fat Joe and Remy Ma recently sat down with hip-hop personality and SOHH correspondent Shawn Setaro on his popular “The Cipher” podcast. Listen to the full interview and check out five gems the duo dropped during the Q&A.]
Joe on Diamond D’s classic album Stunts, Blunts & Hip Hop:
“That is such a classic album. One day, Pharrell pulled me over like, ‘Yo Joe, man, how did you make that album? That album was the soundtrack to my life.’ I remember just loving music so much, and I was honored to support my brother. It’s the best DITC album. Now, my favorite rapper in DITC is Lord Finesse, but Diamond’s album hands down, I would put that up. If we had to battle another crew, what’s your best album against ours, I’d take that album and put it up as the best work ever to come out from DITC.”
Remy on living on her own beginning at 15 years old:
“It’s hard for women, period. To be a female and to be black, Spanish, or minority – forget about it. It’s like a double whammy, because you’re fighting two different things. I was born in the 80s, and I grew up in an era where everyone’s family was going through drug addiction or their parents were being incarcerated because they were the ones providing the drugs. I ended up in a situation where I really didn’t have a place to stay.”
Joe on how real-life criminal charges changed his rapping:
“I could be one of the first drug-dealing rappers, spitting about cocaine and pounds and the RICO laws. Like, my song [“Success”] was saying, ‘Drugs is the key to success, money is the key to sex.’ I was a drug dealer rapper first two or three albums. I remember at one point, all the niggas I grew up with was getting caught for kingpin, and I noticed I started laying off some of the pure. I started to become just a rapper. It affected my music.”
Remy on having PTSD after her prison stint:
“I definitely have PTSD. When I first came home, I got diagnosed. Who would not have post-traumatic stress disorder? You take a girl, she’s 25 years old and she’s at the top of her game, she just put out an album, all her singles are doing well, they were trying to do a reality show, I had so many different deals on the table. And I catch this case. It’s so crazy. I’ve seen so many people go through trials. I’ve never seen somebody get locked up, and seven months later they’re in jail with all of these years of time to do. In the blink of an eye, I was just gone.”
Joe on his attitude early in his career, as expressed in a 1995 interview in Ego Trip:
“I didn’t really care for human life at one point. In ‘95, I was still two feet in the streets, a toenail in the music industry. So I didn’t give a fuck about nobody. I was pretty much a maniac. I came in this business ready to smash anybody. That was a very immature, poor mentality. I don’t take nothing back from that, because I was a young kid then. It made me who I am today. But at the same time, I’m nothing like what I said in ‘95.”
