Jose “Fat Joe” Cartagena is a rapper, actor, and entrepreneur. He released his first solo album, Represent, in 1993, founded the Terror Squad record label, and is perhaps best known for his platinum-selling album Jealous Ones Still Envy (JOSE) and hits like “Lean Back,” “What’s Luv?,” and “All the Way Up.” In The Book of Jose: A Memoir (Roc Lit 101), written with journalist and entrepreneur Shaheem Reid, the story of the hip-hop legend – who came of age in New York’s South Bronx during its darkest years of drugs, violence, and abandonment – unfolds. Across its pages is a tale of how he navigated that traumatizing landscape until he found a path to a different life through art, friendship, luck, and will. He faced the grim choice that defined a generation: to become predator or prey. He was both a hustler roaming record stores looking for beats and a budding rapper with a violent rep, until he was shot and almost killed. The Book of Jose is a thought-provoking story about a generation of survivors, the life-and-death choices they had to make, the friends they lost and mourned, and the lives they created from the ruins.