Fat Joe, Hip Hop and Business Collaborations & Marketing Music | #AskGaryVee 218

- On this episode, the legend Fat Joe stops by. - [Gary] The #AskGaryVee Show. - Hey everybody, this is Gary Vay-ner-chuk and this is episode 218 of The #AskGaryVee Show. And if you're a Jersey boy, east coast if you love music you're as happy as I am right now because I have a legend with me Fat Joe, my man. - Sup my brother? - Why don't you tell the Vayner Nation for the one person who's watching this in who knows where in the world that doesn't know who you are, why don't you spend a minute to say hello to the Vayner Nation. - How's it going my brothers? My name is Fat Joe originally from the Bronx, New York reside in Miami for the last 14 years. - [Gary] The weather? - Amazing in Miami. Originally a member of the Diggin' In The Crates crew that's Lord Finesse, Showbiz, happy birthday Lord Finesse. Showbiz and A. G., Diamond D, O. C., Big L rest in peace. Then the leading founder and president of Terror Squad rest in peace Big Pun, Remy Ma, DJ Khaled the list goes on and on, and whatever, Fat Joe. - Listen, I'm sure everybody knows and if they don't that's their mistake. Tell me what's on your mind these days? A lot of people that are watching right now entrepreneurs, marketers and business people, the kind of people you would enjoy. I was born in Russia came up baseball cards, lemonade stand, a lot of people watch this hustling, making this happen. What's going on in your business world? What are you excited about? Obviously Khaled had this phenomenal situation in the last year with Snapchat. Obviously you've been out and about. - Well, you know I am president of urban and Latino division a company called MarketAmericaShop. com. - Yep. - We teach people how to be entrepreneurs and teach them the importance of residual income. - Yes. - Working one time in your life and always getting paid for it forever. So I work with my Latinos and my Black people in this business but the business has been around for 24 years and Asians and white people you know have made the three and half billion dollars doing this business right here. So I'm teaching the Latinos and the Black people how to do this. We sell vitamins, we sell make up, all those cosmetics so I've been doing that for the last two years as well as I've always been doing my music. - Always. - My main hustle is my music. I've been doing that since day one. - When did music hit your life? Literally out the womb? When you are three? - Well I loved music since day one. But growing up in the Bronx emulating my brother you know what I'm saying looking outside my window is pretty much where hip hop music was created. - Of course. - We had what we used to call jams, block parties right outside my window. So me being four or five years old I used to see them come outside, bring the turntables and we used to go out there and listen to the music and then I just fell in love with hip hop, breakdancing and graffiti. I got into so much trouble writing graffiti on trains. I got thrown out of maybe six, seven junior high schools writing graffitis. And then I got into rapping and battle rapping everybody. I always say I was the original Eminem 'cause I used to battle a whole bunch of Black kids but I had a blonde hair and green eyes and I was kicking that gangster shit. And they was looking out like I was fucking crazy every time. - Yep. You got a reputation. - Here we are. - Yep. So actually my own, now I'm being selfish, I'm sorry, I'm just taking full advantage. What's your point of view on the current state of hip hop? What are you seeing out there what are your thoughts on some of the people that are coming up? What people listen to? - I love J Cole. - Yep. - I'm a huge J Cole fan. I love his freedom of expression. Pusha T's my favorite album. I love Kanye West's new album. I love music, man, and everything is gotta evolve. - That's right. - You know what I'm saying? I love our era that I came out of in the 90s. - Yep. - I also think the era before ours, the LL Cool J, Public Enemy, Heavy D, KRS One was better than ours. - Sure. You grew up with it, right? - Yeah, I grew up with it. - You feel like a lot of the legends, the people have been through it like yourself, sometimes too often are quick to downplay seven years ago the South or new guys that come up? Do you feel like there's too much of that? Like, people are trying to push against it because it's not theirs? - Yeah, I believe, I believe it needs to evolve. - That's right. - I just believe-- - 'Cause it will, right? You can accept it-- - You can go with it or it leaves you. - Exactly. - And I don't want to sound like the grouchy old rapper. - Right. In my day. - Yeah, in my day was like this. We just gotta embrace the youth. You know? - You ready to answer some questions? - Absolutely. - India? - Ready. - You ready to ask some questions? - I am. - India, did you think that you have a day in your career where you were going to ask Fat Joe questions? Was this something that when you thought as a little girl growing up in San Francisco. - No. - Yeah. Let's fire away. - Cool. First one's from Clayton. - Oh video. Clayton. Alright.

- Hey Fat Joe, welcome to the show. The question I have is you did that song with Ashanti a while ago. I think it's called "What's Love". How do artists ever hook up and how do they get to collaborate with each other? Is there somebody like producers that brings that or agent, how does that happen? - How do collabo's happen? Take it away. - A lot of times with me when I make music I hear a certain artist on it and I reach out and I hope they want to work with me. - Like flat-out? You got it in your head and you're like this would be perfect for this person? - Let's skip that. - Go ahead. - Let's just say Cool & amp; Dre, Scott Storch may get it popping and I immediately heard Nelly on there. So we reached out and Cool & amp; Dre wrote the hook and I reached out to Nelly and I was like, "Nelly, do you want to do this hook over for me," and he said yes. We heard him on the song. "Make It Rain" I wrote the hook to "Make It Rain" and I heard Lil Wayne on it because it was a South song and I was like, "Yo, Wayne can you do this over," he did it. You hear certain artist that you want to collaborate with on the songs and you hope sometimes. - Have you ever been devastated when you've really wanted it? - Not devastated but I've been chasing Future on this album and he's been acting real Hollywood with me. Acting like he don't want to do this song. - Uh-huh. - Got to be honest with you. - Playing hard to get you think? - Yeah, hard to get sometimes it's like that. You know? - Of course. Let me play it in for everybody who's watching. Same thing in business, a lot of people always ask me how do you get an angel deals when you invest in the people when you are doing these things? It comes in all forms. Sometimes it comes to you, sometimes reach out but I love, I was curious how you were going to answer it. I think sometimes people try to big up too much and I have too much pride and they don't want to reach out. When you want something you have to go out and grab it. I love instead of you saying oh sometimes it comes to me or this and that you said look I hear somebody I wanted, I'll reach out. Sometimes they say yes, sometimes they say no. Way too many people watching right now, you know how successful this man is in his genre? You know how many of you are too proud to reach out to do something with somebody and you haven't made shit happen yet. - Nah, that's not how it works. - No, it is not. - I think one thing and I'll use this moment I've been wanting to say this to really win you have to equally pull at ego and humility. What do you think? - What I have done, what I've done the new Fat Joe-- - And when did the new Fat Joe come out in your world? - Maybe this year. - Okay. - Let's just say it all the way up. - Okay. Yep. - I've had riffs and not everything was so good between me and Jay-Z in the past. - [Gary] Yep. - I reached out to him-- - [Gary] Be the bigger man. - Yes and collaborated and we did the remix. - [Gary] That was big news in that world. That was big news. - I did not see eye to eye with Daddy Yankee. I got him on the Spanish remix. - [Gary] Mhmmm. - Me and 50 Cent made peace and now we performed together not too long ago. I laid down. - [Gary] Are you enjoying this? - I'm enjoying it because you eliminate all the barriers. - That's right. - You know what I'm saying? All the enemies and all the people-- - When did this happen? January 1 thing for you? Was it a long time? - It wasn't January 1. It was just me. I tried all the wars-- - Right. - And then I just said to myself, you know what I'm going to eliminate all obstacles. And I'm going to try to say put all ego and pride aside and let me just try the non-ego route. Let me try working with everybody and see how this workin' and so far we're platinum on the single, go on to double platinum, tours opening up-- - Go figure. Go with positivity and imagine that. - It's a magical miracle pill that seems to be working. - Yeah, it happens. I'm glad you went there. It's been a theme of mine over my whole life but I've been really... With all the shit that's going on in the world, if you can't go half glass full. If you can't be the person of change and drive positivity and optimism I just think it is a mistake. India. - Mhmmm. - [India] This is from Craig. - Craig.

- [Voiceover] Craig asked, "What do you think people like "Chance the Rapper releasing a lot of his music for free as a "marketing strategy? " - What do you think Chance the Rapper, people like Chance the Rapper, what do you think about Chance's music? - I love Chance the Rapper. - I'm obsessed. (mumbled singing) What do you think about people like Chance and others that are putting out a lot of mixtapes, a lot of product for free as a marketing play or whatever the strategy may be? - I love it. I think you keep the relevancy and you keep the fans engaged. I love it. I think it's a hustle. It shows that you dedicated to the art and at the end of the day the art wasn't meant to be materialism and everything is a dollar. It's about giving back to your fans anyway. - I think the one thing that a lot of you are watching know is I don't have the $500 e-books and the $7,000 courses. I do the shows for free. I pump out content at scale for free. Thousands of you email me every single month, "You should charge for this. "This is better than the shit I'm paying more for. " It plays into that same thesis which is yes but that's why so many more of you follow me. - You get engaged. Yes. - Of course. Either you're running a marathon or you're running a sprint. Figure out what you are doing. - Exactly. - India. - [India] Next one from OTFN.

- [Voiceover] OTWHouston asked, "What is the most important or "best aspect of a live music event or experience? " - I can't answer that. - The most important aspect? - This is you. - Just getting the people and getting engaged. See I try to die every time I'm on the stage. - Die? - Die. Like physically-- - You go so hard that just might go. - I try to die. - I like that. - I would love to die on stage. - Seriously, right? - Seriously. - I get it. - What happens is-- - You look good these days. - Thanks so much. - You're probably less likely to do than I'm back in a day. - I'm trying. I've been trying. - You're looking good, man. - I've been trying to workout every day. - Back in the day you might have been able to pull that off. Looking good though now. - I know, I know. What happens is I've analyzed this so hard to where times are hard and everybody doesn't have money like that. - [Gary] Mhmmm. - And everybody doesn't give money the same way. I've analyzed it to where people buy tickets to go to shows to where every single dollar tells a different story. So everybody who's in this audience had to do a different thing. Work harder, work extra hours, borrow some money, sell something that they really loved to see their favorite rapper. - [Gary] Just to see that show. - Do whatever. So every ticket tells a different story so it's my obligation that if they went through their, through all these changes to see me being their favorite rapper then I have to give them my all in the show. - [Gary] I love that. This is now me jumping in. What is your favorite, what are your some of your favorite venues to perform in? Do you have a favorite venue or two? I saw you at Citi Field the other day. - My favorite show I've ever done in my life was last night. - Hold on, hold on. Your favorite show-- - I've ever done in my life. My best moment in my career was last night. - Well I worked until two in the morning and I've been up since five working so I need to hear the story. - So what happened was yesterday I did Summer Stage in Katonah Park in the Bronx. - Hmmm. - It's the park I grew up in. It's like three blocks away from my neighborhood. My grandmother grew up three blocks in that direction. I this direction. It's never seen no shit like this. So it's usually 500 people at that. There was literally 20,000 people there and 5,000. - [Gary] You saw people. - No, I've seen everybody's mother. Everybody I went to school with. - You saw people that you hadn't seen in years. - It looked like Summer Jam, man. Jam in the middle of the park I grew up in. I have a scar where I fell in the pool where I have stitches my father sold Icees and beef patties in the summer in this park. - [Gary] It was a coming home. - Oh my God. I almost cried on stage. - [Gary] You never performed there before? - It was the craziest shit I've ever seen in my life. - [Gary] Good for you, man. Congratulations. - So when I got on stage it was overwhelming when I looked out it just looked like Yankee Stadium and it was my whole neighborhood and I was like, "Oh shit. " And so many years I've been fighting for the Bronx and talking about yo I'm from the Bronx. I'm representing the Bronx. And when I see they all came out they were like, "Yeah, bro. " - That's nice, man. - Welcome home. - Good for you man. - It was the biggest moment for me in my life. - Congratulations. That's nice. - Thank you. - [India] That was awesome. - It is awesome. - [India] Martin. - Martin.

- Hey guys, what's up? With who do you really want to work with before you die? Keep up the good work. - I'll go first. I want to for work with Vince McMahon. - [Man] Oh WWF? - Yes, sir. - WWE. - And I'll tell you why. WWE now but we're old school. WWF. Yeah, I'm Macho Man Randy Savage. - Randy. - For me, I love storytelling and I love people that loved characters. What I get excited about is Walt Disney, Vince McMahon, people that create characters and IP. Intellectual property so for me Vince is intriguing to me because I'm 40 I grew up in that era of the golden era of that Hulkamania, Macho madness and so-- - The Hulkster's my man. - Yeah, Hulk was in here the other day. It was a lot of fun. For me it's Vince McMahon. You? - Shit. What was the question - Who do you-- - 'cause he got me fucked up. I was in Gary's world right now. (laughter) What was the question again? - [India] Person you want to work with before you die? - Person I want to work with before I die. I don't know I think I would want to do a movie with Will Smith. Something like that. - Nice answer. - Will Smith-- - Did you Will, I mean you were around back then so-- - Nah, man. - Was he a little earlier? - Nah, he was earlier than me and I met Will maybe once or twice but I mean like if there's anybody I want to make a movie with it's Will Smith. - Joe, have you thought about doing collaborations on cross genre music? Have you ever heard a country singer or? - That's what I want to work with, country music. - Really? - Yeah, that's who I want to work with. - I actually, this is me from afar, as a fan, just thinking about it I have a funny feeling that you would do quite well in collaborations in different genres. - It's true and that's where I'm looking towards. Right now country music. - Andy, I'm not just predicting social media shit, Andy. I predict music shit. - No, it's the fucking truth. (laughter) It's the truth-- - I love it. - I'm looking towards country. I don't know shit about country but I fucking love that their fans are loyal. - [Gary] Loyal. - I love that the fans are fucking loyal and I love they're like hip hop. They're just telling it their own way. - [Gary] 100%. - And they're coming from the ground up. I fucking love it. - [Gary] 100%. You imagine Fat Joe and TSwift? That would be the summer anthem. - Some people get a beat up at country shit too. I seen Kenny Chesney's shit. - There's thugs everywhere. - We got thugs everywhere. (laughter) - What do we got one more? - [India] That's it actually. - That's it? - [India] Yeah. You can ask a question yourself. - That's true, okay. Joe, where are you at with social media? - Social media, at first I was anti-social media. - Right. By the way, real quick I want to teach a lot people here because a lot of youngsters. When social media came up, when I jumped on it '06, '07, '08, '09-- - Wow. - when people were famous back then it was just a small little thing. It was a small platform-- - We were more like private. We didn't want people to know our business. - Because the media was already writing stuff they didn't want anyways so why do I need more of this? They didn't understand it and things of that nature. - I started very, very late. With me, put it like this, I had a BlackBerry last year. BlackBerry doesn't even have Instagram and social media so what happened was-- - [Gary] How was the conversion to a smart phone? Did you like it? - It was very great. (laughter) When I finally got me a fucking iPhone and I was like, "Where the fuck it's been all my life? " - Were you just holding out on principle? You made a lot, wait a minute, real quick, you made a lot of changes. - Technology, yeah I know, I'm watching. Isn't it great? - Fucking phenomenal. - You love 2016. - Yeah, I love 2016 and now I run my own social media, my own Facebook, my own Twitter, my own Instagram. I'm having fun doing this shit. - What about Snapchat? - Snap too. I fucking love it all. - When Khaled started blowing up in November, December, January were you talking to him about it, did you see it? - He came from a real place. - I know it did. What happened with Khaled was and this can be breaking news to the world-- - Okay, I like breaking news. - What happened with Khaled was at a very low point in his life. He had an album come out that didn't do too well. - That's right. - He had some very close friends that started to turn their back on him. And he found himself in his home on talking to the lion and talking on the kayak and the rafe talking and he was just discovered this Snap thing. So he just started talking and being on board and talking to the people and the next thing you know people discovered what I discovered 10, 15 years before that he's the most amazing mother fucker on Earth and now he turned in to Beatlemania. - [Gary] It's insanity. - So that's how we all, you know, America got to discover the real DJ Khaled. - [Gary] I love it. Amazing stuff. - It's amazing because other than that, in other words, you had to go through adversity. You have to fall to get up. - [Gary] And he really got up. - Oh shit. - [Gary] And he's taking Arianna Huff, all the way up. - He's [Gary] All the way up. - I mean I don't know what, he might be selling dog food next. - He's selling everything. Everybody wants him. - Milk. - His name is brought up in all three of these floor every day with every brand in the world. - Incredible. - Unbelievable. Joe you get to ask the question of the day. Every guest that comes on gets to ask all these entrepreneurs, business people, you know, motivated individuals any question. Hundreds of answers on Facebook and YouTube, any question you want to know from the masses. - My question is what are we going to do about these police killing these people in America and how can we change it? Because my fans and my followers are asking me this and I'm not God. I'm not Jesus Christ. I can't, I don't have the answers. Right? So maybe you guys can give me the smartest answers in the world because what are we going to do because I feel like America is going 100 steps back. And it's very, it's like all of us who took 100 steps forward and came together as one big race. In this room alone we have so much diversity and we all look to each other as one big happy family, there's a group of us out there that's trying to erase that. And split us up. And I'm tired of seeing men get killed by people power tripping and there nothing I can do about it. - Yep. - And it's getting really, really, really scary out there. I love my country-- - Yep. - and I don't have the answers. - Great. Team let's round up five or seven of the best ones and get it over to him as well. To make sure he sees them. Joe, this is a real honor for me and to have on the show, my man. - Thank you, Gary. Nothing but love. - I wish you continued success. You keep asking questions, we'll keep answering them.