Fat Joe’s first encounter with Tupac wasn’t backstage at a concert or through mutual industry friends—it was in Atlanta, at the legendary Jack the Rapper convention, sometime in the early ’90s.
He didn’t even realize it was Pac at first.
“We in a cipher, one of them conferences,” Joe recalled during the latest episode of Joe and Jada. “He pulls up… Yo, it’s Pac.”
Joe says Tupac walked up wearing a red bandana and strapped with two guns. No fanfare, no crew, no hesitation. Just that signature mix of intensity and unpredictability Pac became known for.
Joe’s takeaway? Every time he saw Pac, he was “in something.” Whether it was fighting bootleggers on 125th, getting into club altercations, or squaring up over principle—Pac was never far from confrontation. “He beat up like 25 Africans on 125th,” Joe said, still in disbelief. “Broad daylight, putting in work.”
The subtext here is deep: this wasn’t the Death Row Tupac yet. This was early, East Coast-affiliated Tupac. But the volatility, the paranoia, the need to stand ten toes down? It was already fully present.
Joe emphasizes that this is the Tupac he knew—the one the industry didn’t protect. When Pac got locked up, Joe notes, it wasn’t his label who bailed him out. “It took Suge Knight to come from L.A. to bail him out,” he says. “They didn’t go in that bag for him.”
It’s a reminder that Tupac was always too raw for the machine to control—and sometimes, too dangerous for it to even support.
