When Bronx rap legend Fat Joe ponied up bail money to smash Justin Bieber from jail in 2014, he tried to do a solid for a friend. Instead, he says one favors undid whatever thin bond they share. On a recent episode of his new podcast, Joe & Jada, a new collaboration with Jadakiss that covers everything from music to sport to culture, Fat Joe told an anecdote about the day he received a call that would put him in Bieber’s business and, consequently, out of his life.
“Raul, rest in peace, calls me up and says, ‘Yo they looking for somebody to bail out Justin Bieber,’” Joe said, referring to his late friend Raul Conde. Bieber was fresh off his arrest in Miami on a DUI charge, a headline-grabbing turn in the pop star’s tumultuous early career.
Joe explained that the bail amount was not wild. “It wasn’t no money,” he said. “It was for nothing, a couple of hundred dollars, a thousand dollars.” The court records showed that the bail was $2,500, but Joe avowed they got something done with Rich Playa’s girlfriend. “We bail out Bieber. $100.”
The number is beside the point; the gesture was genuine. But the aftermath? Not what Joe expected. “Calls me to thank me, and he’s like, ‘Yo, I’m a gangster now,’” Joe said, half-laugh, half-cringe. “I’m like, ‘Yo, Justin. Listen, bro. You gotta stop. We don’t want you gangster.’”
It was a freeze-frame for Joe: Not because of Bieber’s tough new edge, but because of what he believed the young pop prince did not know about himself.
“We in no way want you to get arrested but want you to succeed. You’re Justin Bieber! My daughter worships you! We all love you!” he told him.
Apparently, that straightforward advice from his own “man who broke him out,” as Joe called Obama, on what to avoid saying to the voters to prevent political self-immolation didn’t land the way Joe was hoping.
“Kinda messed up my relationship with him,” Joe acknowledged. “I don’t think he liked it.”
The two have not been close since, and it seems Fat Joe has taken it in stride. Nevertheless, the story has met with some skepticism online. Social media surged with reactions, from curiosity to shade. “This man is nothing but a liar,” one commenter wrote. One more wrote, “Joe is the type to tell a story, and it probably has about 50% truth. But whatever its blend of myth and memory, Joe’s sticking to the story, and now he’s got a mic to tell it the way he sees it.
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