New York Rappers Talk Their Worst Summer Jobs

Image via Darrell Bell

​Hip-hop is the world's most brazenly capitalist genre of music. If Jay-Z's not talking about playing Monopoly with real cash, then Kanye West's tweeting about the cherub-motifed Persian rugs and golden goblets he's just scored at Fishs Eddy. But while certain rotund rap types would have you believe they were running extensive criminal enterprises before they decided to pursue a career in rhymed verse, the truth is more mundane. Most rappers suffer the rite of working demoralizing dead-end jobs while attempting to jump-start their careers and clock up music industry cash, whether it's the Wu-Tang Clan's Method Man greeting tourists at the Statue of Liberty, Biggie bagging groceries at a Met Foods supermarket, or Kanye's mush-mouthed rapping friend Consequence ringing up monochromatic sweater vests at GAP. So when Fat Joe--who just so happens to have released a new album last week--opened his heart to us about sweating it out as a security guard one summer at a sneaker store, we decided to round up a whole batch of New York City's hardest-working rappers--including Prince Paul, El-P, Joell Ortiz, and Tanya Morgan's Von Pea and Donwill--and ask them to talk about their old temp-job blues. Their wretched stories are below.

Fat Joe

​"I worked at Flavor Shoes, on Fordham Road in the Bronx. It was the worst job I had. I wasn't dealing with peoples' smelly feet--I was more or less security. I was a big guy, so they made me a little security guard. I always caught kids, cause I used to boost myself so I already knew how to catch 'em. I'd look for certain moves, like this guy's really not gonna buy this $100 pair of sneakers. We also used to play spades and whoever lost used to have to go and walk to get the food.

The worst thing about working there was I realized that with bosses, there's a way to work with employees where you don't have to do it in a nasty way and enslave your workers and be mean to them, like we're all a team and do it together. I hate when I walk in a grocery store and the guy screams at his employee. You don't have to do it like that. There's a right way, we can all get it done. My boss at Flavor was like that, yelling all the time.

I only worked there for two days. I told my moms I was going to change my life and be a good guy, but then I was watching the videos they was playing in the store and the Big Daddy Kane video where he's shooting the pool, "Smooth Operator," came on. I saw that, quit my job, and went to hustle, took it to the streets."

Joell Ortiz

​"My worst job--and I've had a few of them--was loading trucks for UPS. My back was destroyed! I did all the lifting properly, but it still doesn't help. They have the nerve to say you have to load the boxes into the truck a certain way because of the route, and then you gotta scan them all and make sure that it's for your truck. If it's not, you have to walk them to another truck.

I worked there for a week then I quit. What happened was, this guy goes, 'This right here is your trailer.' I'm looking at it, it's empty, and I see the conveyor belt. He goes, 'I want at least 800 scans a night.' So that's a scan and a load per box, and there's 800 boxes. I was working the graveyard shift, from like 11 p.m. at night until 7 a.m. in the morning. So he goes, 'That's all I need, those 800 scans.' It's 11 p.m., so I get to it, and the first two days there I finish at 4 a.m.. I call him over, I'm hype, I'm proud, I'm showing him my work ethic. He goes, 'That looks nice. How many did you do?' I looked at my scanner and go, '1,012.' He goes, 'That's perfect, come with me.' I walk over with him and he points to another empty trailer and says, 'Do the same thing.' I walked out of there! You do your work and you only get more work? Come on!"

Prince Paul

​"Everyone knows about Pos and Dave [from De La Soul] working in Burger King as they made a song about it ["Bitties In The BK Lounge"], but I worked at McDonalds at one point. And a lipstick packing factory. I've had about 15 different part-time jobs. The worst was at a nuts and bolts factory. I had to sort out the shavings from the bolts. It was always all greasy and there were flies about everywhere. I also worked at Nationwide Construction, who also made nuts and bolts. You could say I was pretty savvy about them at one point. I could have probably started my own nuts and bolts business..."