Fat Joe says he got depressed once he reached age 40 because he worried his hit-making days might be over.
On the latest episode of Joe and Jada on Tuesday (Oct. 28), Joe opened up about aging in a career that values partying and young people, and said it was hard for him to reimagine his career.
“I’ve been rapping, I’ve been in the game since I’m 19,” Joe explained. “So, when I’m about to turn 40, all I know is standing on couches and popping bottles. But that 40 hit you like a different, like… I was depressed.”
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He added that people had been telling him they’d “never [seen] a rapper hit one out the park after 40,” meaning it was hard to make a hit record once you hit middle age.
“So my man Dre [from] Cool & Dre came over on my birthday. I was straight depressed and he was like, ‘Yo, Joe, you know Tina Turner ain’t have her first hit till she was 47.’ So he start breaking all this down. Made me feel a lot better,” Joe said. “‘Cause I was scared of what the future was for what we’re doing…So what we’re doing is we’re selling this brand. We’re selling this and this and that. And then, for a guy like me, it felt like, Oh, they know I’m old now.”
Jada then joined in the conversation and said he’d actually planned on retiring from rap at age 30. “I remember saying, I don’t want to rap at 30,” Jada recalled. “When 30 came, that was out of the f—king question. Then when forty came, I’m like, ‘Yo, got to live a little.’ I felt like I had a lot of more work to do.”
A lot of rappers — including Lil Wayne and Raekwon — have had plenty of success in their 40s and beyond. However, André 3000 admitted in 2023 that his age was a big factor when it came to him hanging up the microphone.
“I’m 48 years old. And not to say that age is a thing that dictates what you rap about, but in a way it does,” André told GQ. “And things that happen in my life, like, what are you talking about? ‘I got to go get a colonoscopy.’ What are you rapping about? ‘My eyesight is going bad.’ You can find cool ways to say it, but….”
Check out the full episode of Joe and Jada below.
