Fat Joe
Joseph Cartagena grew up in the Forest Houses projects in the South Bronx and came up through the Diggin' in the Crates crew before going solo with 1993's "Flow Joe." He spent the 2000s translating boom-bap grit into radio-ready party records, running his own Terror Squad crew — and its DJ, a young Khaled Khaled — alongside a solo career built on outsized personality as much as bars. Four decades in, he's as much an industry connector as a rapper, a role he'd essentially modeled for the DJ who went on to out-do him at it.
Fat Joe has named LL Cool J one of the two or three biggest influences on his rap career and called him his "rap idol" — idolized enough that stumbling into an LL session years later, and getting waved onto a verse, counted among his career highlights.
listen forThe tough-guy bravado wrapped around a radio-ready hook that Fat Joe leans on descends from LL's template for turning hardcore rap into a pop hit.
KRS-One is the other name Fat Joe puts at the top of his influence list, and the Bronx-to-Bronx lineage runs deep enough that Fat Joe put KRS-One on the mic himself for "Bronx Tale" off his second album.
listen forThe borough pride and lecture-hall cadence in Fat Joe's early verses are a direct descendant of KRS-One's South Bronx sermonizing.
Rounding out the trio Fat Joe calls the "gumbo" that makes him, Heavy D showed a big Bronx kid with a big personality that you could top the charts without losing an ounce of neighborhood credibility.
listen forThe good-natured, crowd-pleasing bounce underneath Fat Joe's toughest verses — the sense that a party record can still bang — is Heavy D's crossover instinct at work.