Lean Back - Intellectual

Rucker Park is a legendary streetball court in Harlem, where in 2003, Joe’s team claimed victory over Jay-Z’s team in the league championship after a blackout forced the game date to be pushed back to a day when Jay’s players couldn’t make it. So with Hov on vacation and his players unavailable, Hov’s team forfeited, and Joe’s Terror Squad won the ‘ship without playing. Pee Wee Kirkland is a legendary street baller who played in Rucker Park. Despite his skull, he couldn’t even imagine a win as easy as the one Joe’s team took in this feud.

Jay-Z mentioned Rucker in his song “The Game Iz Mine” earlier in 2004:

Dame peso, my peso is large than The Lakers' Payroll
But I’m the proud new owner of the Nets, no diploma
No regrets, don’t even talk about no Ruckers, motherfuckers
I am set like a tennis match

Fat Joe mentioned it again on “Lean Back Remix:”

This here’s a three-peat, we back at the Rucker

In October 2019, Fat Joe went on Angie Martinez’s show “The Untold Stories of Hip Hop” where he claimed that his beef with Jay-Z was all over the Rucker Park street ball game:

Jay Z’s the richest guy in the world. He got everything in the world. The one thing that I love is the Rucker. So one year, Jay Z decides to put a team at the Rucker. I won six championships out there. I’m 99 and one…this is my baby. I felt, why do they want to come to my park and take my little crown that I got?

Ice fits with the cold world theme. But the ice here is just his diamond jewelry, which has Joe feeling grateful. This chain is showcased throughout the music video:

The phrase “This is life” may even be a reaction to Jay-Z’s rather depressing “This Can’t Be Life” from a few years prior.

Flo-Jo / “Flow Joe” wordplay:

1) Fat Joe reached stardom faster than legendary sprinter Florence Griffith Joyner (“Flo-Jo”) came out of starting blocks.

2) Fat Joe entered the rap scene with “Flow Joe”, his very first single, back in 1993.

The logo on the back cover of the “Flow Joe” single is a silhouette of Fat Joe holding a smoking shotgun.

Fat Joe paying tribute to Biggie here and his line from “Big Poppa”:

However, living better now, Coogi sweater now

Big was known to rock the Coogi sweaters:

Fat Joe was in the rap game for a long time before making it big shortly after Big Pun’s death ( his debut album Represent dates back to 1993)

Also, he’s been making clean money from rapping for 10 years, but the authorities still figure he’s hustling

Fat Joe’s main alias is “Joey Crack.” Crack is cooked Cocaine.

Referring to Fat Joe as Don Cartagena. “Flizzy” is fly pronounced as Snoop Dogg used to do, ending the words with -izzy ( get it, my nizzy?)

BMW’s 7 series at the time. Remy is still rhyming with Snoop Dogg’s distinctive inflection.

Jay-Z had rapped similar lines in “Izzo”:

H to the izz-O, V to the izz-A
For sheezy my neezy keep my arms so breezy

In both cases, they’re spelling their names and commenting on how their arms are breezy i.e cold or icy which is referring to diamonds watches and bracelets.

Joe condemns pop acts who commercialize a gangster image.

Lil Bow Wow had recently thrown up gang signs. (Where? Is there a particular music video or event)

And B2K crip walks throughout this music video for “Girlfriend”:

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/watch?v=6OihwykYdBc&feature=youtu.be&t=1m11s

Big Pun, Tony Montana, and Raul Conte were part of or at least affiliated with the Terror Squad, Joe’s collective from the Bronx.

We didn’t catch all the names here so help us if you know others!

More Jay-Z homages! She’s using Jay like Jay uses Biggie! (But is she big enough to do it?)

Jay spit the following on “Money Ain’t a Thang”:

Said she loved my necklace, started relaxin'
Now, that’s what the fuck I call a chain reaction

Pun on the word chain for necklace and chain reaction as the series of events which follow.

The Gulfstream IV is one of the larger models of private aircraft, and quite resilient to bad weather.

Remy reiterates the song’s chorus and recites an old Ice Cube line:

Gangstas don’t dance, we boogie

Showbiz was a member of the Diggin' in the Crates Crew, a collective Fat Joe was in. Showbiz was in a production duo called the Born Lords along with Eric “E-Blaze” Blaze.

Joe is claiming that a lot of rappers would snitch if the police came asking questions. He is saying they “blow”, but is also tipping hat to the Johnny Depp film of the same name, in which Paul Reubens plays “Derek Foreal.”

Via a 2011 Complex interview:

[W]ith the hook, the Jamaican shit was out at the time, ‘Rockaway, Rockaway! Signal the plane, signal the plane!’ So I was like, ‘I need to make a fucking dance.’ So I was like, ‘My niggas don’t dance, we just pull up our pants, and do the Rockaway.’

And I was like, ‘You know, every time Missy does a song, it’s so simple, but it’s so dope. If you do the Rockaway, you just lean back.’ So I was like, ‘Lean back, lean back.’ And the rest is history.

Rockaway is a Jamaican dance (you can see them doing it in the music video). Apparently popular not only in the clubs.

Joey Crack is a Fat Joe nickname alluding to his early days in the crack game.

He’s present at the big-time boxing matches held in Las Vegas.

And even closer than front row seats, Fat Joe and Big Pun were in the ring performing in Las Vegas in 1999 for Oscar De La Hoya vs. Félix Trinidad. Joe claims to have started the trend for rappers performing as part of boxer entrances, as he and Pun introduced Trinidad, who went on to win the fight.

First rapper’s to perform walking in a boxer to the ring!!!! Blame us https://t.co/KZ2mht0za9
— FAT JOE (@fatjoe) April 8, 2023

She’s gonna stay thug till she dies

Also honorable references to Queen’s Bicycle Race and fellow citizens Ruff Ryders' Ryde or Die

Several Rolls Royce Phantoms are featured throughout the music video.

Joe grew up in Forest Houses on Trinity Ave.

Image via a 2022 People magazine profile on Fat Joe

Joe giving a shout-out to Scott Storch, the producer of this hot track.

Track took 20 minutes according to Storch:

Joe would show off his chinchilla coat in an MTV Cribs episode that aired a few months after this song came out.

The coat is absent in the “Lean Back” video, but he had worn it in his video for “Crush Tonight”:

Fur from the South American rodents is very soft and it can take 150 chinchillas to make one coat, which factors into its high price.

DJ Khaled was even cameoing videos from the early and mid-2000s, and this video is no exception: