New York City’s National Puerto Rican Day Parade is today (June 12) and Angie Martinez and Fat Joe were discussing the impact Puerto Ricans have had on Hip-Hop. Joe told Martinez that the late Nuyorican icon Big Pun had fellow emcees so shook that Joe had to "trick" rappers into joining the famed lyricist on songs.

“In the most respectful way, it’s kinda like I set up Nas on that record,” Joe recalled. “Because Pun really wanted to get on a record with Nas…Nas did the record one million percent; but there was artists, not Nas, but there was artists that was really scared to jump on records with Pun. So we almost had to like gas guys like, ‘Yo, it’s my record’ and then throw Pun on it. The story is, you know, he waited for Canibus about 30 to 100 sessions and he never walked in the door to do the song with Pun.”

“Yeah, he didn’t know,” Joe said. “[Nas] came. He came twice and he rocked and he did it and then Pun came on there… and we had to do that a lot with Pun. Like, I had to get artists on his shit that didn’t know he was on the shit. Not saying nothing about Nas! I don’t want nobody misconstruing this in no way. He was doing a song for me. Yes, he’s on everybody’s lists and this is not referring to Nas in no way but that’s how we did that song, and that’s how you had to do a lot of songs with Pun.”