Fat Joe and Remy Ma brought ‘Lean Back’ back to the streets of Manhattan, and this time the whole city was watching.
Fat Joe and Remy Ma brought Sit back back to the streets of Manhattan, and this time the whole city was watching.
The duo performed at the New York Knicks’ NBA championship parade on June 18, joining a float filled with New York rap royalty as fans lined Broadway for the Canyon of Heroes ticker-tape parade.
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The Knicks defeated the San Antonio Spurs in five games to claim their first NBA title since 1973, ending a 53-year drought.
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‘Lean Back’ performance at the Knicks Parade
Fat Joe exposed in a SportsCenter interview that Knicks management personally tapped him to oversee the hip-hop department for the parade, giving him broad creative control over the float’s lineup.
The result was a roster that included Wu-Tang Clan, The Lox, Q-Tip, Mary J. Blige, Fabolous, Ja Rule, MOP, Remy Ma and Yung Miami.
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According to Blackopened Wu-Tang with TriumphMary J. Blige followed True loveand Fat Joe and Remy Ma closed Sit back before entering All the way up.
Sit back topped the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks beginning on August 21, 2004. The song was released on June 1, 2004 as a single from Terror Squad’s album True storywith vocal performances from Fat Joe and Remy Ma. It has since become a New York anthem.
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Remy Ma captured the mood of the day quite simply. “I’ve never seen this level of unity,” she shared AllHipHop.
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The performance also attracted online attention for another reason: Fat Joe’s distinctive gait, which stems from an old leg injury he has talked about publicly.
Around August 2025Joe recalled the incident where his leg was twisted while trying to escape a shooter.
“They start shooting the car at us. I jump over the gate. Turned my s–t up,” he said. “When I was a teenager, I never went to fix it.” He said the injury occurred when he landed incorrectly while sitting in front of his building and was never surgically corrected.
One moment that made the rounds online was New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Knicks star Karl-Anthony Towns doing the Lean Back dance together on a nearby float. Celebrities including Kylie Jenner, Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Swift were also seen in the crowd for the title game.
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