Fat Joe has embraced the title of 'Uncle Joe' for Ashanti and Nelly's new son, Kareem Kenkaide Hayes.
Ahead of the 2024 BET Hip-Hop Awards (which Fat Joe hosted) on Tuesday (October 15), the "What's Luv?" rapper gave People an update about Ashanti being a first-time mother. While Kareem is the couple's first child together, Nelly also has two adult biological children, Chanelle and Cornell, and two adopted children, Shawn and Sydney, from his late sister, Jackie.
"I am Uncle Joe, and she is the best mom in the world,” Fat Joe told People about Ashanti.
"And that baby is beyond beautiful," Fat Joe continued. "When they let you see that baby—like Muhammad Ali, that baby."
Joe, who partly credits himself for Ashanti and Nelly's 2021 Verzuz reunion after the couple were estranged for over a decade, said he was "bragging" about Baby Kareem shortly after his July 18 birth.
"I just kept bragging for like, a week to every random person I met. I was like, ‘Her baby's crazy.’ Yo, he's so beautiful," Fat Joe said. "God bless this baby. I'm just done. Nelly and Ashanti—you know, they are beautiful. I'm telling you, this baby is different, he's like royalty, and he sits there like—I don't know how to explain it to you."
The father of three added that since the "Baby" singer has a "real tight family," he doesn't have any parenting advice, and joked that her close family would be intimidating to past suitors.
"I used to tell her when she was single, I'd be like, 'Yo sis. You know why you single?'" he recalled. "She’d be like, 'Why?' and I’d say, 'It’s because you go on a date with your mother, your father, your sister. Like how you want a guy to even talk sweet talk to you in front of them?'"
"But that? I'm not worried about any parenting issues over there, because that family, they with each other through thick and thin. No matter what. It's just a beautiful family," Fat Joe concluded.
While Ashanti and Nelly reportedly wed in 2023, the couple plan to trade vows in an elaborate ceremony, as the singer detailed in a Entertainment Tonight interview from June.
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