Fat Joe was 19 when the doctor sat them all down with bad news: his son Joey had been born with Down syndrome, and raising him would be a major challenge.
On the Club Shay Shay podcast with Shannon Sharpe, the Bronx rapper said that he, his parents, and the baby’s mother were all in that room. According to him, she said she couldn’t handle it and that he should be put up for adoption. His mother didn’t even consider it, and that’s where a four-word phrase came from that sums it all up: “We raised him”. They raised him.
Fat Joe says he never saw Joey’s mother again, that she “abandoned the child”, and that he never closed the door on her: she could always see her son. Today, Joey is 33, also lives with autism, and is the “Don” of the house. “He does whatever he wants and gets whatever he wants”, his father says, calling him his greatest blessing because they never gave up on him.