Soundcheck: Ja Rule Delivers Double Release Before Heading To The Big House
posted in: Music News • Urban
Ten years ago, Ja Rule was one of the biggest names in hip hop. He ruled the charts with hits like Always On Time and What Would I Be Without You, launching Ashanti into super-stardom and creating a new genre of radio-friendly, hip-hop pop that focused more on love than guns. Now, the Queens-bred rapper has all but disappeared, plagued by legal problems that will send him on an eighteen-month prison stint this week. Oddly enough, fans have a hard time recalling what he’s even being locked up for.
Unbeknownst to many fans, Ja was arrested alongside Lil Wayne in 2007, and charged with gun and drug possession with Weezy, who served eight months in 2010 for the offense.
Instead of prepping for the big house, Ja Rule has been prepping for two album releases. Pain Is Love 2, the follow up to his 2001 hit, and TheRenaissance Project, out today, have been his primary focus in recent months, despite the hard road ahead. “I just want to put it out to the world before I go in,” he says in a new video interview below. “It’s funny because, I’m about to go to jail, and my main concern is to make sure that I get this album done and out there for the fans.”
Ja Rule seems to be by-passing his jail-time altogether in his mind, now focusing on his cross-country tour, 40 Days/40 Nights, which he plans to embark on upon his release.
He told Rap-Up.com, I want the bus to come straight to the prison and take me to my first show. Put my family on the bus, have them come to the first few cities, send them back home and let me keep going. It’ll be international; 40 cities in 40 nights. I’ll be so fresh and ready to go.
The jury is still out on how fans will receive his latest projects. Fights with 50 Cent have done damage to his reputation. Ja Rule admits he regrets the exchange, saying “We can coincide inside of a world. He’s doing him, and he’s not thinking about me, and I’m doing me and I’m not thinking about him,” he says. “”I was a little ashamed of myself to be even involved with that. Because I’m like, yo, I’m 35 years old and I’m on Twitter beef? That’s not something I want to entertain.
Say what you will about him, but the former Murder Inc. poster boy had quite the career in his hey day. He reunited with his former protégé, Ashanti, who has also been laying low in recent years. They collaborated for the first time in seven years on the new track, LOL. The song samples Stevie Wonder’s Master Blaster and is remniscent of the lovey-dovey, hood love ditties that made Ja Rule and Ashanti so successful in the first place. Ja Rule displays his signature sing-songy rapping style, spitting lyrics like “LOL. LMAO/But it ain’t funny how I don’t see you no more.”
I must admit that while I loved Ja Rule in my high school days, I was a little reluctant to press play on the early cuts in my inbox. But, if LOL is any indication of what’s to come, the nostalgic nerd in me will probably pick up both of the albums.