Fat Joe has revealed how he got the nickname "Joey Crack."
"They call me Joey Crack 'cause the crack of my ass show whenever I stand up girls in my hood gave me the name," he wrote on X, formerly Twitter. "It was never because the drug crack God is great."
This isn't the first time Joe has explained where the infamous moniker came from. In an episode of the Angie Martinez-hosted series Untold Stories of Hip Hop in 2019, Joe said that he got the nickname after several girls in his class at school laughed at him when his pants would sag down.
He also spoke about it in an interview with MC Lyte in 2021. "My pants used to sag and the girls in the projects used to say 'Joey Crack,'" he shared. "Everybody officially knows in Jersey, where Joey Crack comes from. They seen my ass, completely."
Fat Joe most recently made reference to the nickname on A&E's Origins of Hip Hop series last year, in which he suggested that the true "Joey Crack" came out after he had a particularly rough experience with being bullied as a child.
“When I was in junior high they would bully me every day," he said. "You know, I’m not gonna lie, it’s scary looking out the classroom window knowing that there’s 20 guys waiting to beat my ass. They never fought me fair. They would always jump me.” His best friend, Leonard, turned on him after the bullies convinced him to jump him.
“They were like, ‘Well if you don’t jump him with us, we’re gonna beat you up every day too—and my friend Leonard jumped me with them,” Joe said. “I went home and I cried for so many hours. I had a black hoodie on, black jeans and black Timberland chukkas. I’m tying my chukkas over and over again and I was like, ‘I don’t give a fuck I swear to God, giving it to everybody. That was the birth of Joey Crack.”
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