Fat Joe revealed he helped facilitate The Notorious B.I.G working with Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. During a sit down with Angie Martinez’s Iconic Records podcast, the Bronx emcee talked about the making of the Life After Death track “Notorious Thugs.” Joe disclosed that Biggie called him and asked to link with “[his] guys,” as the Cleveland quartet was allegedly “ignoring” the Brooklynite. 

“Biggie hit me up and was like, ‘Yo bro, I’m trying to get in touch with your guys. They don’t wanna do it. They ignoring me.’ They didn’t wanna do a song with Biggie. And just for Biggie to think that advanced because New York wasn’t up on Bone Thugs like that,” he recalled.

“He know that they was gigantic, and he was like, ‘Yo, I need to do a song with them,'” the “What’s Luv?’ rapper went on. “And I was like, ‘Um alright.’ And he was like, ‘Nah, I know you the plug. You can do it.’ I was like, ‘Alright, Big, I got you.'”

But as Crack continued, he revealed why Bone Thugs dodged B.I.G’s advances: 2Pac. Joey detailed how he convinced the group to see past Pac and Biggie’s issues and collab with the rapper.

“So, then I called them, and they had already been cool with 2Pac. And so they was like, ‘Yo Joe, we can’t do it. We cool with 2Pac.’ And I’m like, ‘Yo bro, this is B.I.G,” he continued. “‘You know what it is to do a song with B.I.G.?’ So, I convinced them — and shout-out Steve Lobel — and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony showed up to the studio. They did the record ‘Bone and Biggie, Biggie.’ And so, every time I see that picture, I laugh, but that’s why we got that.”

In May 2023, DJ Clark Kent also chopped it up with Martinez on the podcast, where he shared a Biggie story of his own. Clark Kent recalled LL Cool J unknowingly passing on the beats for two of Biggie’s hits: “Sky’s the Limit” and Junior M.A.F.I.A.’s “Player’s Anthem.” Kent told Angie how LL had the beats for both tracks. However, the iconic emcee failed to “listen to it properly,” resulting in the fumbled bag. 

“[‘Player’s Anthem’] rings off in the Tunnel,” Kent began telling the story. “[Kap] plays it like 10 times in a row. Now, me and Biggie are standing against one of the walls in the Tunnel. LL Cool J’s walking by, and the club’s going crazy. I’m like, ‘Yo, wassup?’ And he goes, ‘Yo, what is this?’ I was like, ‘It’s the new joint with Big and his crew.’ He was like, ‘Who did this?’ I was like, ‘I did.’ He was like, ‘Yo, dawg, I need a joint like that.'”

He continued, “I said, ‘Well, remember that tape I gave you with the silver label on it? That was the first one on the tape.’ And he was like, ‘This?!’ I was like, ‘Yeah, you had it first. You had it before [Jay-Z]; you had it before all the guys that you had any rivalries with. You had it first. I shouldn’t have [given] it to you, but I did. But you had it first, and you didn’t pick it. So, now you hear it in the club.'”

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