Fat Joe’s “Pick It Up” is picking up even faster than he could believe.
“This new single, I haven’t dropped a record since ‘Lean Back’ that got 600 spins on Mixshow, not even adds in one week,” Joey Crack recently told N.O.R.E. during a recent taping of Drink Champs. “So this muthafucka is looking like it’s gonna be a missile for niggas. 2018 for that ass.”
“Pick It Up” features Dre of Cool and Dre on the hook, and a sample of Tupac Shakur’s “Ambitionz Az A Ridah,” which Joe says he to spend a pretty penny on.
“The Tupac Shakur estate, I had to hit everybody off,” he explained. “I got great relationships as you know. I went hard to clear it. It was very very expensive. Thank God they let me clear it. We got a little backslash. Some people was like ‘why you use Tupac?’ Daz got on Instagram and was like ‘yo Joe keeping hip-hop real. Dre what up my Nigga?’ That shut that thing down right quick.”
During Drink Champs, The Bronx King also talks about a couple of his other big tunes.
“When I was recording that song I was listening to a lot of Rae and Ghost that day,” he recalled, describing the inspiration for the opening of “So Excited.” “They was talking wild shit. At that time I was like ‘I wanna pop shit at the beginning of the song.’ I turn around and I got my little nigga who really has a zoo in-house.”
On “Shit is Real,” Joe tells about being 14 years old and getting retribution on his older, 22 year-old cousin who owed him drug money.
“That whole song was Facts. For a long time when I first started, everything I said was real,” he described. “My cousin, I gave him some work. He was older than me.”
Joe dives deeper into his career, analyses the Ma$e Vs Cam’Ron beef, and even addressed Steve Stoute’s comments that Joe is a better A&R than rapper on “Drink Champs” this week. Watch the episode above, or tune into REVOLT TV at 10 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 22.