Fat Joe Shares the Advice Lil Wayne Gave Him About Serving Time in Prison

Fat Joe stopped by Red Table Talk in an episode set to air Wednesday to reflect on his yearslong friendship with Lil Wayne.

“Lil Wayne is my brother, man,” the rapper tells hosts Jada Pinkett Smith, Adrienne Banfield-Norris and Willow Smith in the preview clip. “One of the saddest things I ever did was go visit Lil Wayne in jail. And not only that, they had him, like, chained up. They had him, like, really chained up, like, Lil Wayne! This little, like, no, no, they had him in shackles and all that. They had him like he was the killer of all, right?

“So you know, I went to see him…He lives across the street from me in Miami,” Fat Joe continued, before telling the trio about getting a phone call from Wayne as he was preparing to turn himself into jail a few years after Wayne was released. “I was like, ‘Yo, Wayne, what’s up?’ And he was like, ‘Nah, man, I’m just telling you right now, be humble.’ I said, ‘How do you do it?’ He said, ‘Just be humble, bro. Don’t go in there on somethin’. Just go in there humble. You know, if you be humble, they’ll respect you.”

Lil Wayne served eight months in Rikers Island back in 2010 on charges related to a gun found on his tour bus in 2007. In 2013, Fat Joe served his own three-month sentence in prison after pleading guilty to tax evasion.

This fall, Wayne was honored with an exhibit dedicated to his life and career at the National Museum of African American Music in Nashville, which includes a handwritten letter from his time at Rikers.

Watch Fat Joe’s Red Table Talk preview here.