Complex sat down with Bronx bomber Fat Joe to discuss his 25 favorite songs from his nearly two decade career. During the interview, the Terror Squad/D.I.T.C. rapper spoke on his 1998 collaboration “Twinz (Deep Cover ’98)” with fellow Boogie Down emcee Big Punisher. Joe explained that he want to make a track the both the east and west coasts could be bump, so he and Pun decided to take a crack at Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg’s 1992 single “Deep Cover.”
“I knew I had to do a song with Pun on his album [Capital Punishment],” he said. “I also knew the world was bigger than New York, so we had to do a track that I knew they would play on the West Coast. When Snoop [Dogg] first came out, and him and Dr. Dre did that ‘Deep Cover,’ that was the hardest shit. And nobody had fucked with it. So I said, ‘Yo Pun, let’s go back and forth on this bitch so I can introduce you to the game.’ So we sat down and wrote it. Back and forth, we’re going in. Hard. We wrote it together.”
Joey Crack also spoke on Pun’s infamous “Dead in the middle of Little Italy” line from his verse in the song. He explained that Pun initially intended the line to be a joke, a la the “Pakinamac” skit from his debut LP. Joe, however, loved his partner’s tongue-twister rhyme and made him keep it in the track.
“The ‘Dead in the middle of Little Italy’ rhyme wasn’t even a rhyme. Pun used to play around and say [that tongue twister], just like he used to walk around going, ‘Packin’ the Mac in the back of the Ac, packin’ the Mac in the back of the Ac.’ These were like jokes to him…I had to argue with him to put ‘Dead in the middle of Little Italy’…in the song. I was like, ‘That’s the hardest shit on earth.’ He was like, ‘Are you crazy? That’s a fuckin’ joke. Niggas will laugh at me. Are you serious?’ Then he did it, and it was the illest shit.”
Check out the full 25 song list over at Complex.
