Fat Joe can no longer take hits for granted. While never a megastar, Joe has proved himself one of the most resilient rappers of all time, with a lengthy career spanning Big Punisher, Ja Rule, and DJ Khaled. At a point, he looked to be one of those old icons, like Snoop Dogg, whose stature seemingly grandfathered him into radio play for life. But then the hits dried up. Before his comeback single with Remy Ma “All the Way Up” returned him to the charts last year and earned a pair of Grammy nominations, it had been nearly seven years since Joe released his last commercial album, and almost a full decade since his last Top 40 hit.
In truth, “All the Way Up” would have been a hit with or without him. It’s primarily a showcase for Cool & Dre’s deliriously celebratory beat and a never-better feature from French Montana, which makes it a Fat Joe hit in the same way that “Fuckin’ Problems” was an A$AP Rocky hit. No matter the means, though, a smash on this scale is a major feat for any rapper. And so on Plata o Plomo, the belated follow-up to 2010’s The Darkside, Vol. 1, Joe goes to almost superstitious extremes trying repeat that single’s formula. He brings on Remy Ma as an equal partner, recruits Cool & Dre as primary producers, and invites back French Montana for its second single, “Cookin’.” Despite his best efforts, lightning does not strike twice.
Joe’s great gambit is going halfsies with Remy Ma. Her own career was limping along before “All the Way Up,” and the two had previously scored the biggest hit of their respective careers together—2004’s inescapable “Lean Back”—so it figures they’ve come to view each other as lucky rabbits’ feet. And recently, other New York rap lifers have found second winds with these kinds of collab albums. Smoke DZA and Pete Rock just teamed for a widely praised record, and Joell Ortiz has rarely sounded more alive than he did on his Salaam Remi-produced album last year with No Panty, his group with neighbors Bodega Bamz and Nitty Scott.
Collaborations like this work best when there’s some meaningful contrast between the performers, though, and Joe and Remy Ma are too similar to establish any kind of yin/yang dynamic. Both stem from a school of New York hip-hop that values presence over personality, and they both rap with meticulous enunciation, punctuating each bar with percussive emphasis. Their voices hit like rocks on concrete. That may be catnip for some diehard New York rap enthusiasts, but for younger listeners who came up with the nimble, free-form expression of modern Atlanta rap, that delivery can feel downright arthritic. What scans as hard for one generation of hip-hop fans just scans as stiff to another.
And while Joe can bend just enough to fit different styles—he’s been doing it since he was biting Das EFX flows on his 1993 debut Represent, riggity-riggity-rather blatantly—Remy is inflexible to a fault. She assumes a default battle stance even on songs that in no way call for it, like Ty Dolla $ign’s smooth ’80s R&B homage “Money Showers,” or the Sevyn Streeter-featuring DeBarge/Blackstreet flip “Go Crazy.” She still continues to rap about shitting on her enemies, too. She does it on two different tracks.
Plata o Plomo does feature one strong single candidate: the Caribbean-flavored the-Dream feature “Heartbreak.” Joe delivers his loosest performance in years, and for once even Remy Ma unwinds a bit and breaks out the suntan lotion. But more representative of the album’s conservative approach is the mid-album champagne clink “How Long.” The song’s yawn of a chorus is supposed to be a boast about their veteran status—“How long?/How long?/How long we been getting to the money?/How long?/How long we been gettin’ it?”—yet through sheer repetition it becomes a kind of commentary on their songwriting: How long have we been rapping about this? How long have we been returning to these sounds? Without running the math, it sure feels like it’s been ages.
