My Gut Reaction: Fat Joe - Me, Myself & I (November 14, 2006)

Me, Myself & I is the seventh solo album from Joseph "Fat Joe" Cartagena, and its most notable aspect can be found on its back cover:

I know it's here because of the album's title, but come on, that is hilarious, and I, for one, appreciate how Joey Crack was accepting all of the responsibility, and the blame, for his career trajectory, at least back in the day. It's a power move heretofore unseen in most of the hip hop community, and I ask that you both take a moment to applaud his decision.

Okay, that's enough.


My ongoing Fat Joe project, in which I review his catalog in reverse chronological order by release date, was supposed to be something I thought could be kind of funny - if we run it backwards, we can pinpoint the exact moment Jose Grande sold his soul to the primitive radio gods, the fork in the road where our host decided that continuing his musical career, regardless of whatever trends he had to chase, would be much more beneficial than maintaining any semblance of artistic integrity. But of course, these type of projects are never that simple: while I've come across multiple reasons why the artists formerly regarded as Joey Crack should just stop, please, just fucking stop, there has also been more than one occasion where the man proves that he's still capable of pulling an entertaining performance out of his ass, which, at the very least, has made this game that much more interesting.

Me, Myself & I was the first Fat Joe project released under the man's then-new contract with Virgin Records, and production-wise, it's essentially the same album as his previous effort, All or Nothing, since many of his collaborators share space on both. (Weirdly, the production duo Cool & Dre, who had a fruitful working relationship with Large Joseph's Terror Squad collective, does not appear in any capacity on Me, Myself & I, and given how close our host is with them today, I have to assume that some sort of legal issue prevented them from giving their good friend some musical backing, similar to how The Neptunes declined to help produce Justin Timberlake's second album with Jive Records due to the label continuously screwing over their friends in the Clipse, which resulted in Timberlake's long-term partnership with producer Timbaland.) Familiar names abound in the album credits - aside from assists from Streetrunner and DJ Khaled behind the boards, A-list stars Lil Wayne and The Game pop up in the vocal booth to give our host a boost.

I only remember one song being released as a single from Me, Myself & I, but unfortunately that one song was ubiquitous enough to carry Jose Grande into his next project, so while there's a very good chance you two won't be as familiar with the rest of this album, I can all but guarantee that you're aware of the single, which I choose not to name at the moment, because, damn it, we'll get to it.

1. PENDEMIC

Streetrunner gives Giuseppe Corpulento the type of sped-up soul loop that rappers who dream of a career like Jay-Z’s love using for their rap album intros, and, obviously out of pure coincidence and nothing more, our host uses it for his rap album intro, which he titled “Pendemic”, and he can be heard patting himself on the back every few bars throughout, as though that was the most clever creative decision he’d ever been involved with. To his credit, he does use the beat to deliver a decent one-verse wonder that is filled to the brim with boasts-n-bullshit, unspooling threats, reflections on his own career (“Must I… spit conscious shit just to win a Grammy?”), and generally celebrating the gangsta rap sub-genre, which he seems proud to be a part of. The track isn’t great, but the man raps his ass off (albeit in a tired, conversational manner), and there are certainly worse ways to kick off projects such as Me, Myself & I, so I’m kind of grateful Joey Crack chose this path. I’ll likely regret that sentence later on in this write-up, but it is what it is.

2. DAMN

“L.V. on the track, hell of a bassline / Remind me of the times I was serving them base lines,” Large Joseph says at one point during “Damn” as a way to inform listeners that he, too, engages in the still-popular rap sub-genre known as coke rap. (Because saying the word “coca” at the beginning of the track, not to mention continuing to refer to himself by the alias Joey Crack, weren’t clues in and of themselves.) Anywho, “Damn” isn’t all that bad for a song where our host spends the entirety of the first verse threatening to murder his adversaries, even if the bassline, or the entire instrumental for that matter (produced by L.V. of Sean and L.V. / former Bad Boy Hitmen fame), wasn’t a “hell of a” anything. It was decent, though, Joe seems self-satisfied with his alleged lifestyle as presented on “Damn”, confidently dropping lavish boasts and talking mad shit while dismissing basic geography with a shrug, Trump style (“I was just island-hopping somewhere in Tahiti / I think it’s called Fiji or something” – nah, man, it isn’t). Fans of Jose Grande will likely find something to latch on to here, and I wouldn’t blame them. “Damn” is fine! I don’t feel the need to replay it right now, but I’m not opposed to having the option.

3. THE PROFIT (FEAT. LIL WAYNE)

A rare turn behind the boards for professional personality Khaled “DJ Khaled” Khaled (credited as “Beat Novacane" during the track itself), one that ultimately isn’t worthy of a listening experience: although the loop he concocts isn’t bad, it hardly ever fucking changes, and since “The Profit” runs for longer than five goddamn minutes for some reason, that’s a lot of time for Khaled to remain in a holding pattern. “The Profit” absolutely plays on how the word “profit” sounds like “prophet”, a fact you had likely already taken away from this paragraph, seeing that there’s a homonym in the song title itself. However, Large Joseph spends his screen time cooking cocaine (“Something like a chef, yeah, I get my Raekwon on”, which just sounds awkward - you try saying the phrase "Raekwon on" and tell me it doesn't sound completely silly) and, again, murdering adversaries, never truly focusing on what kind of profit he allegedly receives for these extracurricular activities, nor does he ever explain what exactly makes him prophet-adjacent. Guest rapper Lil Wayne, who introduces himself via his own chorus immediately following that of our host, fares a tiny bit better than Joey Crack’s bland cadence, spitting non-sequiturs and talking about how he was technically homeless at the time of recording (Weezy had been displaced by the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina, and was put up ion a mansion in Miami with the help of producer DJ Khaled, in case you two had missed my Khaled write-ups discussing this over on the Patreon) while managing an odd gem with the line, “The sun even shines on dog shit.” Wayne also receives the only deviation in the instrumental, as Khaled briefly slips him some additional instrumentals that Jose Grande missed out on entirely. “The Profit” is kind of crap overall, what with its generic presentation and the lazy ramblings of our host, but Lil Wayne fans may enjoy his contribution.

4. NO DRAMA (CLAP & REVOLVE)

Did Rick Ross write this? Because “No Drama (Clap and Revolve)” is a Rick Ross song, from the instrumental (provided by The Runners) on down to the lack of complexity in the subject matter and the verses themselves. “Simplistic” isn’t always equivalent to “bad”, of course, and Officer Rozay has managed more than one entertaining song in his career thus far. But this track is garbage. Large Joseph’s labored threats and boasts aren’t convincing in the least fucking bit – honestly, he sounds like he was in a rush to get home that evening. The raps themselves are lazy piffle, filled with placeholders that almost assuredly weren’t intended for the public’s ears. (“I smell pussy pussy / Yeah, pussy pussy”? The fuck?) The beat is blandly radio-friendly and the “hook” is, there’s literally no other way for me to put this, ass. The hell with this song.

5. BREATHE AND STOP (FEAT. THE GAME)

Nu Jerzey Devil is a deejay and producer probably still best known for his alignment with Compton name dropper-slash-rap artist The Game, so seeing his name pop up in a guest capacity over one of his friend’s beats makes perfect sense, even of his inclusion on Me, Myself & I is simply because Fat Joe was still embroiled in a beef with 50 Cent and this was one of those “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”-type situations. But it was off to hear Jayceon limited to just the (shitty) chorus on “Breathe and Stop”, which wasn’t the Q-Tip cover song nobody said it would be. Over an attempt at a dancehall loop, Jose Grande speaks random shit into existence, and it’s as exciting as one would expect. Although I’m kind of grateful that The Game was reigned in here, I didn’t care for this shit. At all.

6. SHE’S MY MAMA (FEAT. H-MOB)

On the horrifically-titled (more on that in a bit) “She’s My Mama”, Giuseppe Corpulento uses a Streetrunner soul loop to weave a tale about his unnamed shorty, a ride-or-die companion who he met at a disturbingly young age (more on that in a bit) who ultimately aids-and-abets a bank robbery in the song’s biggest twist. That part is fine: it showcases our host’s storytelling skills, which he often doesn’t get an opportunity to flex. It’s all of the other shit that’s incredibly problematic, to put it lightly: Joey Crack talks about meeting her when she was sixteen, aware that he needed to “[wait] till I touch the cat”, which, fucking gross, but, without establishing any time transition, then starts bragging about her blowing him (something “that she learned… from the porno flicks”) and, nope. Even back in 2006, which wasn’t really as forgiving as the current climate regardless of what anyone believes, this was Fat Joe da Pedophile clearly grooming a young woman in a sexually abusive way, and that renders the entire goddamn song fucked-up. Why would he think this would ever be okay? Why wouldn’t anyone at the label pull him aside and say, “Um, yeah, you need to delete the entire first verse or else the feds may come after you for something far worse than evading your taxes”?

7. MAKE IT RAIN (FEAT. LIL WAYNE)

The lone single from Me, Myself & I, “Make It Rain” is an ode to having enough disposable income that one could reasonably drop dollar bills upon strippers and sex workers from above without creating as much as a dent in your finances, and not, bafflingly, an exploration of alternative irrigation techniques. Producer Scott Storch, knee-deep in a debilitating cocaine addiction that would ultimately cost him millions of dollars and most of his career, turns in a half-assed work that wouldn’t even warrant turning up the dinky radio in your dentist’s office, let alone a club, and yet “Make It Rain” was a big hit for Joey Crack, so the fuck do I know? Lil Wayne pops back up to simply deliver a (shitty) chorus, one obsessed with the idea of “[mak[ing] it rain on these hos”, while our host’s three verses are gimmicky, lazy, and, honestly, offensive to the Southern style of rap he’s allegedly been inspired by here, as he spits more elementary shit in an effort to broaden his audience (read: stretching his fifteen minutes out even longer). This shit sucks, man, and it sounds so much worse today.

8. JEALOUSY

LV returns to the boards for “Jealousy”, a 1970’s-esque soulful loop that approaches the work he would do alongside production partner Sean C. on Jay-Z’s American Gangster the following year, but he isn’t quite there yet, as there is no hook in the instrumental for the listener to hang his or her hat on. It’s just an endless loop with the titular word piped in every few bars or so. For his part, Large Joseph sticks with the overall theme of “Jealousy”, boasting about his success, material possessions, and… well, actually, he doesn’t really talk about all of the beautiful women that allegedly throw themselves at him, save for a single bar, marking a rare show of restraint from our host. Ultimately “Jealousy” doesn’t really work because our host complains about the jealous nature of the haters around him, but he never explains what he’s done to deserve living his fantastical lifestyle in the first place, which makes him seem naïve at best, and his failure to learn anything from the process eats away at the track. Also, he references Trump (welp, that didn’t age well now, did it?) and conveniently forgets about his fear of flying for the sake of one lousy bar, so.

9. THINK ABOUT IT

Spitting coke raps around a known addict isn’t the most prestigious move on Fat Joe’s part, but hey, Scott Storch is an adult, and he could leave if he wanted to. Then again, it isn’t as though “Think About It” is potent enough to trigger a relapse: hell, if anything, it may dissuade listeners from looking to this lifestyle for easy answers, because it is boring. As. Fuck. Storch’s instrumental is all bland strings and feather-light drum patterns, hardly a proper soundtrack for a song where our host constantly brags about his power and threatens his opponents, but said bragging and threatening rings hollow, as our host comes across less Fat Joe Da Gangsta and more that know-it-all asshole in the crew who’s liable to get himself killed just because he doesn’t know how to shut up. Oh, and this shit sucks.

10. HARD NOT TO KILL

Is the fact that Joe Fatson builds “Hard Not to Kill” (a terrible song title, by the way, as it implies that he’s actually rather easy to take care of) around a couple of Jay-Z bars (taken from “Streets Is Watching”) a sign that predicted producer LV’s later working relationship with Hov? Fuck no it isn’t: life may be full of coincidence and magic, but when you work in a self-contained industry such as the music business, you’re bound to cross paths with some of your favorite artists eventually. This fucking shit was dull, though: LV’s beat fared a tiny bit better than his work on “Jealousy”, but Joey Crack’s boasts-n-bullshit skew toward the lazy, unfinished, half-painted, warped-wood side of the fence, as though he had long run out of ways to describe murdering his adversaries and selling drugs. Le sigh.

11. BENEDICION MAMI

Joseph’s ode to his mother, “the realest shit [he] ever wrote”, rides along a Michael Jackson sample, one that Jackson personally cleared for him, at least according to our host. This is the most personal the man has ever been behind the mic, and his tribute to his mother, who did what she had to do to take care of her family, including beating cancer, may not be the most original of subject matter, but the sentiment is heartfelt, and you can tell that our host struggled with exposing himself like that. “Benedicion Mami” (loosely translated as Joey asking for blessings for his mother) is, lyrically, the best song on Me, Myself & I so far, in that our host actually gave a damn about the songwriting here, and producer Streetrunner’s use of the MJ sample isn’t bad. You’ll only need to listen to this the one time, though, and you’ll likely share Joseph’s relief toward the end of the track when he abruptly proclaims, “It’s Crack, bitch!”, signifying the shift back to our regular programming.

Also, I get the meaning of the song’s title, but why wasn’t this one called “She’s My Mama”?

12. STORY TO TELL

If this were a Kanye West project, Me, Myself & I likely would have ended on “Benedicion Mami”, but Fat Joe doesn’t really showcase his vulnerable side all that often, and as such, we get an actual final track: “Story To Tell”, a DJ Khaled-production that features our host with not one, not two, not four, but three stories to tell. He doesn’t spend all that much time with any of these tales: he hits the bullet points on the note cards he keeps in his back pocket at all times and moves the fuck on, never allowing any of the verses time to breathe, but that’s to be expected when the track itself only runs for a little over five minutes. Khaled’s instrumental is far more dramatic than his earlier work on “The Profit” and honestly isn’t that bad, really, but Joey’s three verses describe pain-by-numbers situations that have happened to thousands of different people, so it ultimately falters, as our host’s storytelling skill set isn’t as refined as it once was. Borrowing inspiration (and most of the song’s title) from a far-better track from the late Notorious B.I.G. was also a ballsy tactic that never pays off. The final minute of Me, Myself & I is handed over to our host running through a lengthy list of shout-outs that include the rest of the Terror Squad (of course), DJ Khaled (obviously), the producers that all dropped in to help out on the project (that was nice of him), Pitbull (um, sure?), and the Diggin’ In The Crates crew, which, as I always forget, Fat Joe is still a major part of. At least he remembers though, right?

THE LAST WORD: Me, Myself & I is an album that sounds like a rerun even if you were never even aware of its existence until just before you clicked through to my write-up. Fat Joe spends so much time chasing the popular trends of the day that one is left wondering when he could possibly have had anytime to catch his breath. It’s chock-full of shameless and crass attempts at radio airplay, as Joe Fatson had sold his soul long ago: I understand he has a family to take care of and a standard of living that he may not be prepared to sacrifice, but at the same time, this isn’t the same guy that came up with the Diggin’ In The Crates crew, spitting street shit over beats by Diamond D and DJ Premier. Instead, the Jose Grande I’m writing about today is the man that watched as his late friend Big Pun moved over one million units of his own debut album, Capital Punishment, and wanted to feel that high himself, every day, for the rest of his career. There’s no other reason why there would be two fucking Lil Wayne features on Me, Myself & I – Weezy was a draw at the time (hell, he still kind of is, his awful take on police brutality notwithstanding), and his mere presence isn’t as much an artistic collaboration as it is a promotional tool. The production on the vast majority of Me, Myself & I is shiny suit shit that could never reach its intended audience because no such person exists in nature, and Joe’s odd attempts at the yacht rap throne occupied by his friend Rick Ross smack of jealousy.

All that said, there is one song on Me, Myself & I that is worthy of a single listen, and that’s our host’s dedication to his mother, “Benedicion Mami”, if only because it provides literal, verifiable proof that Cartagena is capable of writing a song that explores a topic other than materialistic boasts-n-bullshit. No, the song itself isn’t that great, but the writing is stellar, and Joe deserves credit for that. The entire rest of Me, Myself &I is not deserving of anything other than a flaming bag of dog shit on its front porch, however, so let’s not get too ahead of ourselves with congratulating Giuseppe with doing what is, ostensibly, his job. Avoid this one at all costs.

-Max

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