Let me ask you this, is 50 Cent a street legend? Black Just and Bimmy vouched for him and they're street legends. We know he had issues with Preme and Henchmen who are street legends. E Money Bags vouched for him and he's another big name.
When you say legend that's a first ballot hall of famer. 50 and Joe were heavy in the streets but they weren't kingpins or hyper violent boogeymen. They're not up there with those guys. Maybe they made an All Star, Pro Bowl game or two but they're not getting gold jackets. If you let Joe and 50 in there's a thousand others who were on their level or higher you're going to have to call legends but you don't know them because they don't rap.
I grew up in crack era NY. This is all anecdotal and I never ran the streets but had family who did. I first heard about the Supreme Team when visiting them in the Bronx. They used to talk about them often as well as all the big names in Harlem. I first heard about the Decepticons, a Brooklyn crew who had kids in every borough scared to ride the subway, from them. For what it's worth I never heard them mention Joe and they're not far from his hood. I'd go to school and hear about Alpo. These guys names were everywhere whether it was word of mouth or newspapers.
I didn't use the word "legend", because I don't know enough about anyone from NY to call them "legends"...
All I was saying was a response to the posters who believe Joe is an actor. I don't think he's an actor, because there's decades of validation that he isn't. If I'm wrong, then there's scores of dudes well older than me who have presented him wrong...
Now with that said...
There are levels to guys in the streets, just like there's levels to everything. I don't typically think in terms of who's "legendary" or not, and I actually ran the streets for a long time, essentially between the ages of 15 and 28. It's easy to recognize guys doing shyt on a bigger scale...
If your definition of who is legendary is just the guys who did it the biggest........okay. I don't really agree with that, because there's nuance in everything. If you're a factor in your section, there's legend associated to your name, and "factor" means when your name is brought up, are you just a guy or are there specific stories and circumstances people associate with you?
I've known guys in years past who went hard for a year or two who I'd say had legendary runs but even in those runs weren't the biggest at what they were doing...
I'd consider myself legendary in a sense as even though I was never the biggest, baddest mf I took this show across multiple states and multiple hoods, I have a name identifiable in multiple places, and my transformation from being heavily involved to where I'm going, is probably legendary within itself...
But no, I never thought Fif or Joe were the biggest to ever do it. But if true, everything I've ever heard about them is that they were established names where they are from...
