For Fat Joe, perseverance is the key to success. Rhyming since the early ’90s, the Bronx big man got a small taste of true rap stardom with the hugely successful “Lean Back.” And he’s not gonna let 50 Cent stand in the way of his quest for more.

If you’ve ever had the chance to roll with Fat Joe, you know he rolls big. Regularly rubbing shoulders with millionaire pals like P. Diddy and Matthew Knowles, the Bronx native has cribs in both New Jersey and Miami, enough ice to sink the Titanic and a sky-blue Rolls-Royce Phantom that (F a driver!) he pushes himself. As you might imagine, he frequently stops traffic.

White, Black, Latino, Asian, young or old—if people don’t know the 13-year rap vet by his aliases Cook Coke Crack or the Don Cartagena, they damn sure recognize him as the “Lean Back” man. 

“We knew it was hit,” says Joe, who’ll be joining Nelly on tour this Spring. “Scott Storch gave me the beat, and I was scared to rhyme to it. I was listening to it for two or three months like, Yo, this shit crazy. This shit is crazy! Then one day, I was talking to [my right hand man] Macho. I was like, ‘Should I talk about bitches, or should I spit the hard?’ I said, ‘Fuck it, I’ma spit some hard shit on this.’”

The intuition was on the money. His Terror Squad crew got the    ultimate jump-off single for last summer’s group effort, True Story. Strangely, though, the success of “Lean Back”—one of the most heavily rotated songs in radio history, according to BDS figures—didn’t translate into album sales. True Story has sold a mere 400,000 copies.

Indeed, the burden of being the boss can make Joe’s arms ache. And recently, other events have been bringing a scowl to his grill. Unhappy with Joe’s participation in Ja Rule’s hit “New York,” 50 Cent shared harsh words in the March issue of XXL and on the song “Piggy Bank” from his album The Massacre.

Still, sales stats and rap spats can’t bring the Don down. He has high hopes for his new solo joint, All or Nothing, and his family life keeps him right. But let him tell you—Fat Joe’s good with words.

Lately, everyone seems to be talking about the progress you’re making as an MC. What do you attribute that to?

I’m a student of the game. I gotta thank Pun for that. He taught me a lot. He taught me how to put words together. I gotta thank him and I gotta thank hip-hop. I used to look up to niggas and I was like, Damn, I wish I can rhyme like this dude. I wish I can rhyme like that dude. I wish I can be as nice. But what started happening was—maybe like last year, before we started doing the Terror Squad album—I started hitting the Kay Slay tapes. Then I was like, Either everybody is getting wack, or it seems like I’m at niggas’ levels right now. They say practice makes perfect. l was like, Wait a minute, I’m as nice as this nigga. This nigga ain’t spitting crazier than me!

Still, when you put out the album True Story—even though it was a critical success, and you had the biggest single of the summer—it still struggled on the SoundScan charts. What was it like for you, having a smash like that, and then seeing first-week sales of under 100,000?

That was really disappointing. But that wasn’t the first time I was disappointed. Right now, I look like I’m gonna sell 300 … 400,000 for All or Nothing. It’ll be just my luck—here we go again: 150,000. It’s just been the story of my career. As far as sales, you want to sell records, but I can’t put a gun to niggas’ heads. They just have to come out and support and realize what I been doing. All I can do is continue to make hits.

There’s a guy in Virginia saying he actually wrote “Lean Back.” There’s even a song called “The Real Lean Back” floating around on the Internet. He says he’s going to sue.

That’s hilarious. It wouldn’t be a hot song without somebody trying to sue over some stupid shit. Everybody wants a piece of a hit song. I guess we’ll see what happens, but I don’t know that nigga... I don’t even give thought to that. I’m not worried about that. It’s impossible. When I did that song, I was with DJ Khaled in Jerusalem studios [the home studio in which production duo Cool & Dre work] in Miami. That was that. I knew it was incredible. I knew the beat was stupid. I made the intro. Like, when I work with Scott Storch, I love being there with him and creating the music with him. I think he’s the most talented producer on earth today... We do beats together…

Obviously, there’s a bunch of tension between you and 50 Cent right now. Let’s start from the beginning. When did you first hear 50 was coming at you?

Dr. Dre called me. He told me like, “Yo, I got mad respect for you, mad love for you. I want to work with you one day, but homeboy dissed you.” It was shocking, like, “Dissed me?” ’Cause don’t nobody diss me. I was like, “You know what. Tell money I ain’t got a problem with him. If I got a problem with niggas, I let ’em know.” Then Chris Lighty [50’s manager] and everybody [started] hitting me. I was like, “He can change it. If he changes it, I don’t got a problem with it.”

50 told XXL that you and some other MCs tell reporters, “Fuck 50,” off the record but won’t say it to his face.

So Fuck 50! Fuck 50 in his face. I don’t know about these other niggas. Crack ain’t about that. That ain’t even Fat Joe’s style. He gotta really understand that I’m the D-O-N. I don’t know if his record sales have gotten to his head. He’s a little nigga to me. He can never be me. He can never look at me in my face and be me. All this fast success and all this money. I don’t look at him as no superhero. I look at him as a little nigga.