12 Things We Learned From Fabolous On The Breakfast Club

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Fifteen years ago, Fabolous dropped his debut album, Ghetto Fabolous. Today (Sept. 15), Fab joined The Breakfast Club to reflect on that infamous day in American and Hip-Hop history and some of the more interesting moments in his career thus far.

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While it was a decent debut project any potential noise it would’ve made was drowned out by two louder events: 9/11 and Jay-Z. September 11^th 2001 not only marked the day America was attacked on its own soil but it also saw Jay-Z release his second classic offering in The Blueprint.

But time has seen the Brooklyn MC continually progress in his career and 15 years later F-A-B-O-L-O-U-S has surely become one of Hip-Hops more prominent names. From speaking about why he was comfortable dropping on the same day as Jay to his dislike of ghostwriting for other rappers, Fabolous gives listeners some intriguing insider information that you won’t hear on any of his records or mixtapes.

Here are the 12 things we learned from Fabolous on The Breakfast Club.

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Photo: Power 105

Photo: Instagram

1. Humble Beginnings

Like many underground New York rappers in the 90’s, Fabolous used to go into DJ Envy’s mother’s basement to record freestyles.

Photo: Instagram

2. Debut Schedule Conflict

He didn’t have a problem dropping Ghetto Fabolous on the same day as Jay-Z because Jay-Z was originally supposed to drop The Blueprint a week later. But thanks to bootlegging the release date got bumped up a week to September 11.

Photo: Instagram

3. Patriotism Helped

His first video “U Can’t Deny It” coincidentally featured lots of shots of the American flag and because the 9/11 tragedy had the entire country pushing patriotic images, MTV jumped on the video and featured it a ton. You know, back when MTV used to be primarily a music video channel and not a reality TV network.

Photo: Instagram

4. Afro-Latino

Fabolous is indeed Latino and Black. He’s part Dominican.

Photo: Instagram

5. Grace Jones Part 1

Grace Jones refused to clear the sample for “Doin It Well” ending up being one of the reasons his last album didn’t drop as they were banking on that single.

Photo: Instagram

6. Grace Jones Part II

Rumor was originally Grace Jones cleared the “Doin It Well” sample so long as she was able to appear in the video. Unfortunately LL shot the clip and never even texted her about it. Needless to say that did not go over well with the famous model/actress/singer. LL Cool J messed up the money.

7. Blessed By Hova

Fab’s hit “Make Me Better” was originally Jay-Z’s, but Hov gave it to him because he felt Fab could freak it better than he could. That’s huge props from the Hip-Hop legend.

Photo: Instagram

8. Label Changes

When he made the transition to Atlantic Records from Elektra Records in the mid 00’s he felt the label was focusing more on the emergence of Southern style records than his own projects. Luckily for him they “traded” him to Def Jam for another artist.

Photo: Instagram

9. 50 Cent

Around the same time that Fab was transitioning through labels, 50 Cent called Fab to try to recruit him to G-Unit. This was when 50 was signing every Hip-Hop veteran and they mama and G-Unit was lookin’ like a potential retirement home for a lot of rappers.

Photo: Instagram

10. Lil Wayne

Lil Wayne was supposed to be a guest feature on Ghetto Fabolous. This was when Weezy was a scorching Hot Boy and Cash Money was as tight knit a family as the Kardashians. Wayne laid down the verse but when Fab left Interscope there were some things he wasn’t allowed to take certain things. Wayne’s verse being one of them. Wayne did walk away with 4 bottles of Cristal though.

Photo: Instagram

11. Jadakiss

He’s shooting for an October release for the long awaited joint project with Jadakiss. Don’t hold y’all breaths though, he said they’re only two cuts deep into the Freddy Vs. Jason EP.

Photo: Instagram

12. Ghostwriting

Fabolous has written for other artists, but doesn’t care much for doing it because he feels they don’t get where he’s coming from. In other words, sorry Drake.