Ja Rule continues his conquest
By Steve Jones, USA TODAY
Hosting a show on MTV recently, Ja Rule looked at the teleprompter and was surprised to see his name was actually spelled right. It was just another sign that after two hit albums, the star of the 23-year-old Queens-born rapper is rising.
"I'm still kind of shocked when they get it right in articles and like that," says Ja Rule (Jeffrey Atkins). "They used to put an 'h' on the end of Ja because they didn't know me like that. I am a double-platinum artist, and they should get it right, but it still bugs me out."
Just two years after being introduced to the mainstream via a song-stealing appearance on Jay-Z's smash Can I Get a ..., Ja Rule has lived up to the ambitious title of his 1999 debut album, Venni Vetti Vecci (his version of the Latin "I came, I saw, I conquered"). He has sold millions of records, become a pitchman for such companies as Calvin Klein and Coca-Cola, and is enjoying a budding movie career.
With his second album, Rule 3:36, he managed to shrug off comparisons to other rappers, banish the one-hit-wonder label and avoid the sophomore jinx that plagues the vast majority of hip-hop artists. And in the process, he has taken a place with longtime friends Jay-Z and DMX at the top of rap's current pantheon of stars. The second album has succeeded largely because raspy-voiced Ja Rule offered more, rather than more of the same.
After being propelled to stardom by the gritty street anthem Holla Holla, with its ominous "It's murder" chant, expectations were that he'd follow up with other songs in a similar vein. Ja Rule says he was having none of that.
While Rule 3:36 has its share of hard-core jams, its first single, the lilting Between Me and You (an ode to illicit love), and the sexy follow-up Put It on Me go in a different direction.
"People were saying I got lucky with Holla Holla, and I just had to prove myself again," says Ja Rule, who spent four months in California working on the album. The change in venue was "a different vibe. It was hot, and there were palm trees. It was a great environment for me to be around and reflect. It made the album brighter."
He also had tired of critics saying he was trying to sound like DMX or look like the late Tupac Shakur. So he took steps to establish his own identity.
"I really try to be very different from everybody else," he says. "It's not my fault that X and I have similar voices, and it's not my fault that me and 'pac have similar builds. So to get away from these things, I had to do the opposite. DMX and Tupac never had hair, so I grew my hair and now I have braids. I don't feel that DMX would ever make a record like Between You and Me or Put It on Me, and I wouldn't make his type of record. I never saw the similarities anyway, but since I was hearing that, I had to really go out in left field."
Ja Rule's seemingly overnight rise is actually the result of seven years of struggle. He says he can laugh now about the popular perception that he's a protégé of Jay-Z or DMX. Back in 1994, when none of them had yet made a dent in the public consciousness, Ja was part of the New York collective Cash Money Click (no relation to New Orleans' Cash Money Records), which also included DJ Irv Gotti. The unknown Jay-Z and DMX made guest appearances on a Click album that was never released.
But what did come out was a black-and-white video, which caught the eye of Def Jam president Lyor Cohen, who eventually hired the energetic Gotti as a Def Jam executive (he now heads the label's Murder Inc. Records, Ja's recording home). It took some time for Gotti to get Ja Rule signed, because he was still under contract with the Click's label, Blunt Records. In the meantime, Gotti brought DMX and his Ruff Ryders management team to Def Jam and helped smooth the way for Jay-Z and Roc-a-fella Records to join the company.
"It's a funny story," says Ja Rule, "and Lyor likes to say that if he hadn't discovered me, he may not have (had) some of these other beautiful things that he has got going on here."
Ja Rule's music is rife with religious imagery and symbolism. On the cover on his first album, he takes a prayerful stance, while the title of his newest album is the first of 13 rules ("He who believes in Ja shall have everlasting love/He who does not shall not see life but the wrath of my vengeance") that embody his life philosophy. On the song One of Us, he postulates a God who has to face daily struggles (in similar fashion as the unrelated Joan Osborne hit of the same name).
"I'm real spiritual, but I can't say that I'm religious," says Ja Rule, who was raised a Jehovah's Witness but also worshiped for a time under the banners of Catholicism and later Islam. "I think that people really don't need religion, but should just cut out the middleman and serve God themselves."
He says he "jacked" Rule 3:36 from the Bible's John 3:16 and made up the rest of his rules. He intended to keep the rules private, but he posted them on his Web site at the suggestion of his record company. The site allows fans to respond to the rules, something that has proved eye-opening to the rapper.
"That's why the computer is kind of dangerous," says Ja Rule, the married father of two young children. "I was reading some of the messages, and they were like, 'Ja, you're the greatest,' and it's different from being into your music. They are into me.
"That's the scary thing about the Internet, because you can have somebody so into you that they will follow you, and that can be a problem. That's why I get so much flak about the 'murder' thing, because kids are looking and listening, and you become this role model even if you don't want to be. There's nothing you can do about it; you just have to learn to be more careful with what you say. But I do try to let everybody know that I do make adult music."
The same can be said for the gritty urban films he has made so far — Turn It Up, with rapper Pras; Crime Partners, which is based on a Donald Goines novel and also stars Snoop Dogg and Ice-T; and The Fast and the Furious, which is due March 28. His next project, the cop drama Training Day, stars Denzel Washington and will come out in the fall.
By that time, he hopes to release his third album, Pain Is Love, a double CD. He believes his increasing stature will allow him to take even more risks and get even more personal. He says it will be a summary of everything he has gone through, and it will allow him to "pour out my heart and soul, joy and pain. All of me."
