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Fat Joe Tells A Story About Ignoring Eminem’s Demo Multiple Times

You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take–and for Fat Joe, that meant missing out on signing a rapper who turned out to be one of the biggest hip-hop acts of all time.

This weekend, while speaking at a live event for Miami’s 99 Jamz radio station, Fat Joe recalled a story about a then-unknown Eminem. According to the Bronx legend, Em gave him his demo tape six different times–but still, he never ended up listening to it.

“Eminem out here in Miami, he gave me his demo like six different times. Everywhere I went was this little white boy and he kept giving me his demo. He was like, ‘Yo, listen to my music, I’m telling you, I’m nice, I’m nice, I’m nice.’… I didn’t do it and now he’s the biggest guy in the universe.”

After headlines started circulating about the clip, Fat Joe even expanded on his statements, calling his decision to ignore a young Eminem the “biggest mistake of [his] life.”

In the clip, Joe went on to say that similar situations happened with Rock Ross when he approached him about being signed. But luckily for him, he did end up listening to Pitbull’s demo, and he’s the one who took him to New York to get him a record deal. So that’s a pretty big deal in and of itself.

While it probably hurt for Eminem at the time, seeing one of your favorite rappers over and over and still not having them give you a chance, there’s a pretty good chance that his career would have turned out completely differently had he come onto the scene with a co-sign from Fat Joe instead of Dr. Dre.  As for Joe, he was probably getting dozens of demo tapes from fans on the street every single day, so you can’t really blame him for not listening to every single one.

Moral of the story: if someone hands you a mixtape of the street, you might wanna take the time to listen. And if not, you could miss out on a whole lot of money down the line.

Hip-Hop History: Fat Joe Remembers Passing On Eminem’s Demo Tape 6 Different Times  was originally published on globalgrind.com