What prompted you and Joe to come together and do this album now? It feels like a full circle moment?

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I think it was just time. I was doing my own thing. I've been gone for a while. He's kind of been on hiatus for a little while. But one day we had done a performance together in the Bronx. That was probably the first performance we did in I don't know how many years. And the response from the crowd was just so crazy. I was just like, "You know what, maybe we should give this a try. Let's just see what happens." It was like a shot in the dark type of thing: We'll go in the studio, we'll record some songs, and if it comes out dope then we'll go from there. It can't go halfway, it can't be alright, it can't be okay. It has to be crazy because the last thing that people heard us on together was "Lean Back," which was Grammy nominated. So we have to be at least up to that par. We went in the studio and we started recording and it was just coming out amazing. Actually, the first song that we recorded together was "All the Way Up."

Some people might expect the album to be 12 versions of "All the Way Up," but there are a lot of different sounds and ideas on it. Did you guys have an agenda when you made it?

It wasn't even like we were trying to do a lot of different things. It was just that was the way it came out, and we took the best of the best. It was executive produced by Cool & Dre, who are like geniuses as far as I'm concerned. I've been working with them since I was young. As they cranked them out on the production side, we just went in and did what we did.

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Fat Joe, what I can say about him — what people in the industry but not too many fans know, his ear for good music is like none other. He can smell a hit a mile away. Me, I don't have the patience. I cannot sit there and listen to a hundred million beats. He will sit there and listen to beat after beat after beat until he sniffs it out like a bloodhound. So that process took a little long. I give him all the credit. He sat in the studio and listened to beats for months. The whole summer and maybe even some of the fall. He was going to clubs seeing what songs was popping, trying to see what people was really feeling, what the vibe was and once he picked all the production and things like that we went in there and we probably spent like two weeks, three weeks tops, and laid vocals down. And that's how we've always worked, even when we did the Terror Squad album. The one that I was on — True Story that had "Lean Back" and "Take Me Home" — we did that the same way. We picked the production, then flew down to Miami for like two weeks. And it's crazy because it seems like a fast process, but when we're in there we're just locked in the whole time.

You've been in the game a while now. How would you say your music is different now than it was when you started, or even than it was even a decade ago?

You know what, it's weird because due to the timing of when I first did my verse on Pun's album to now, yes, that's a long time. But there was an eight year period in the middle of all of that where I couldn't put out no music at all, period. So, to me, everything is still fresh and new. I only have one solo album under my belt. This is just the third album that I've even worked on. I feel like I missed so much. As far as how much I've changed, I think everything is just growth. I feel like I'm as good as I was then, but then I have people like my husband and Joe and the Cool & Dres and the DJ Khaleds being like, "Omg you're phenomenal. You were good before but..." and I'm just like yeah, whatever. I feel like I was as good then as I am now, y'all buggin'. But apparently, they all think I'm much better now. I don't know if I should take it as a compliment or what. But if I never put out another record or album in my life, I'd still record music. That's just in me.