Fat Joe, the South Bronx Puerto Rican counterpart to Notorious B.I.G. of Brooklyn, N.Y., is a gigantic physical presence with the rhyming skills and booming voice to match. The force of his delivery often forces the beat to match his flow rather than his flow surrendering to the beat's rhythmic constraints. Jealous One's Envy, his stellar sophomore effort, finds the Fat one living much the way he did the last time out, daring suckas to step up to get beat down, interspersing his autobiographical tales of the hard life with boasts about how large he's living. Unlike other pseudo-hard rappers, Fat Joe doesn't necessarily always have to talk about bucking people down to communicate his hardcore appeal. On "Bronxtale," he pairs with KRS-One over a lush jazz track that floats along without losing its edge, a style characteristic of most of the songs on the album. The best moments come with "Success," a "Flow Joe" remake called "Part Deux" and the album's best song, "Respect Mine," on which Fat Joe is matched with the hottest underground rapper of 1995, Wu-Tang's Raekwon the Chef. There might be better rappers than Fat Joe, but he has so much heart, so much exuberance in his flow and in the way he approaches his subject matter, that his personality has a way of winning you over. - Rolling Stone. A favorite of mine, revisit Joe's LP below...