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Interview: Its's A Wonderful Life

- by Shaheem Reid, with additional reporting by John Norris, Curtis Waller and Bridget Bland

Ja Rule's own 'hood is looking at him sideways.

"He wack."
"He's weak."
"He needs to retire."
"He sings too much."
"50 Cent is killing him right now."

You could hear these candid declarations echoed in Any 'Hood U.S.A., but unfortunately, on a sunny spring day in 2003, they were coming from the mouths of people who live just minutes away from where Ja Rule grew up. You could walk up and down Jamaica Avenue, the shopping epicenter of Queens, New York, and ask any of the youngsters - whose hungry ears devour hot hip-hop joints faster than Audrey II can eat a human being - about the once-celebrated flagship of the Inc. Records, and most would tell you, point-blank: They're not feeling him.

They ridiculed him on BET's "106 & Park" when the "Mesmerize" video debuted. When his image appeared on the big video screen during a set by his nemesis, 50 Cent, at the Super Bowl of urban music, Hot 97's Summer Jam X (which, coincidentally, was held just days after the Z100 concert, at the same venue), he was booed, then mocked by 50 Cent, then laughed at by the crowd. If you popped in any mixtape, you'd hear Rule practically being beheaded in verse by foes like Eminem, 50, Busta Rhymes and even his onetime close friend DMX.

Even though he remained a darling to the mainstream - headlining a sold-out concert at Giants Stadium for New York's pop station Z100, and watching "Mesmerize" reach #2 on Billboard's Hot 100 singles chart while the video battled for the top spot on MTV's "TRL" - Ja's street credibility was shot.

"I don't think we ever stopped putting out good music, it's just that we had a swell-up of hate," Rule said recently, sitting in a back room at the Inc.'s Crack House recording studio in New York, as he reflected on his and the label's downward spiral. "I seen a lot of artists go through it. When you're crushing it, doing well, I can see people getting a little tired of Murder Inc. Then, with the extra addition of beefing and [50 Cent being] the hot new thing, it came down like snowball effect. A big snowball! It was like an avalanche. But I'm a fighter. I'm a strong dude. I ain't gonna let nothing keep me down or take my focus off the goals I set for myself. I knew that we was gonna come through. It was just a matter of when."

And as the summer of 2003 progressed and the dirt was being kicked on Ja's grave, the tide began to turn. Just a little over a month after the Summer Jam slaughter - which ended with Em, 50 and Busta performing their Ja Rule dis track, "Hail Mary" - Ja Rule was back in New

York to make a surprise appearance at an Ashanti concert.

Backstage, the rapper was a little anxious. He didn't know what the reaction would be when he stepped onstage. Would the fans remember that they used to turn up the radio when one of his records like "I'm Real" or "Between Me and You" came on? Or would they impolitely let him know that he needed to make his appearance as brief as possible and let the boo birds fly?

When Ja Rule came out for "Always on Time," dude was greeted with cheers like 50 Cent never existed and it was 2001 all over again. Rule was able to leave the stage - his trademark wide grin intact - and hold his head high. But still, that show was just a few hundred people at a free concert. Heck, they might have just been happy that they didn't have to pay.

The real test would come late in August 2003, when, once again, he was jumping onstage as Ashanti's guest. This time, however, he was at the arena that every rapper or singer dreams of performing in - New York's Madison Square Garden - appearing in front of more than 18,000 people, who paid a fraction of a king's ransom to see headliner R. Kelly.

The heat was on. But sure enough, when Rule got on the mic, the house went crazy. If anybody was booing, you couldn't hear them over the screams of approval.

"You know, it flashed through my mind, maybe the first time," Rule recalled, more than a year later, about the possibility of getting booed. "Then, the first time I went onstage, they went crazy for me - and it kinda confused me, like 'What the f---?' This was like an abnormal going crazy, too. It wasn't just the normal 'Yeah!' It was like, 'Oh sh--!'

"But then I started to understand it," he continued. "And you gotta understand, you're in the business, and there are a lot of closet haters that don't really have no reason to hate you. But if they're in a group of people that feel that's the sh-- to do or say - 'Yeah, f--- him!' - then that's the route to go. I started to realize there's a lot of people that got love for me, too."

Ashanti, for one, didn't harbor any doubts. "Even through all of the mayhem of last year, Ja Rule came and did his thing and reception was bananas," she said, recalling the 2003 concerts. "The reception was off the chain. I've never seen Ja Rule get booed at any show."

For Rule, it's been a 360-degree ride back to glory, with two monster singles - the celebratory street anthem "New York," and "Wonderful," which features R. Kelly and Ashanti - acting as major catalysts.

The 'hood - especially the one Rule grew up in - has come around too. "New York" has become Rule's most popular hard-edged record to date. In October, he was back in Queens (and the Bronx and Harlem) filming scenes for the song's video with Fat Joe and Jadakiss. The fans were out in force, showering the trio with love.

Meanwhile, although the numbers for Rule's recently released R.U.L.E. pale in comparison with previous releases like Rule 3:36 and Pain Is Love, the album has been hailed by critics as one of his best yet. It has gutter-entrenched riot-causers like "Gun Talk," introspective narratives such as "Life Goes On" and "Where I'm From," and records for the ladies like "Never Thought" and, of course, "Wonderful," which pairs Ja's gruff but melodic hip-hop crooning with Kelly's harmonious soul-baring - and finds both men taking aim at people who left them when the chips were down.

"I think R.U.L.E. is incredible, actually," opines Jermaine Hall, executive editor of King and Rides and a veteran hip-hop journalist. "He finally realized that he should go back to his original formula for making hit records. I think 50 Cent baited him into abandoning his formula, just because of the history of their situation. If you talk to people on the streets now, some of the people that were really hating Ja, they're starting to give him a second chance. You can't front on a good album."

"I'm in LL [Cool J] mode when I think about that," Ja, smiling, said before quoting LL's 14-year-old anthem: " 'Don't call it a comeback/ I've been here for years.' In the music business, you've got to give the people what they want, and that's the nature of human beings - to vote for the underdogs. And because I had so much hate in the last year, I'm now the underdog.

"I like being the underdog - it gives that extra 'Rrrr!'" he added. "You go harder. When you're [successful], you sit easy a little bit."

Rule has been doing anything but sitting easy over the 18 months: In fact, when his cred was at its lowest, he was out there, feeling the heat.

"I'd go out, previous to my [new album] coming out, and I'd hear, 'G-Unit, yeah!' " he said. "Then I'd keep going out, 'cause I like that type of stuff. I was having fun confronting the fans that had turned on me. It started to create a friction - a very-needed friction.

"I look at a lot of that stuff as a blessing in disguise," he elaborated. "When you go through experiences like that, you see the picture for what it's worth."

Through it all, Rule said he's learned to appreciate family, both musical and blood, more than ever.

"I really learned a lot about people's values," he said. "You had to be a leader to be on Ja Rule's side. The ones that stood up for me, holla back. I got y'all forever."

Ironically, Ja Rule has found himself in the middle of a difficult situation with regard to the recent feud between his friends R. Kelly and Jay-Z, which has resulted in a lawsuit and criminal charges. A couple of years ago, in the midst of Kelly's sex scandal, Rule stood up for the Pied Piper and appeared on Kelly's Chocolate Factory LP when most were treating the R. like public enemy number one. This year, it was Kelly proving he was down for Ja, joining the rapper on both "I Wonder" (which has never been officially released) and its remix, "Wonderful."

On October 29 at Madison Square Garden, Rule was slated to be a surprise performer during Kelly's set when the now-infamous Best of Both Worlds breakdown occurred. Kelly refused to continue performing the concert because he claimed two men in the audience were waving guns at him, although he changed his mind after being convinced that it was safe to return to the stage by the promoter. The singer never did make it back to the mic, because he said he was pepper-sprayed by a member of Jay-Z's entourage.

"I was not with Kells," Rule recalled of that night. "Kells was coming to the stage; I was on the stage watching the show from the monitors. I didn't see anything. I felt the melee going on and everybody start clearing the stage. How does Ja Rule always wind up in the middle of these things? I'm trying to stay neutral. You guys, settle that, good luck. I'mma stay absolutely out of it. "

With Kelly leaving the Garden well before the concert was scheduled to end - reportedly to seek medical treatment after the pepper-spray incident - Jay had to scramble and call upon his celebrity friends to complete the show. One of them was Jay's estranged buddy Ja Rule.

Rule was quick to downplay longstanding rumors that he and Jay had beef stemming from a series of events that include the Inc. trying to sign onetime Hov enemy Nas, and Jay later going on tour with Ja's biggest foe, 50 Cent.

"Me and Jay never had a falling out," he said. "It was just competitive. It was just that we wanted to be the best at what we do. That [night] was the first time we'd stepped on the stage together since '98, '99. It felt real good. In my eyes, that's how it should be. We came in [the game] together, seen each other grow. It was fun.

"I remember when we use to go on Cancun trips. I got arrested, Jay would bail me out. It sounds bad, but it was fun. Those were the good old days. Hip-hop is different now. Everybody's cliqued up."

Far more contentious was the feud between the Inc. and the Shady/ Aftermath/ G-Unit crew, which bubbled to a boiling point at the end of last year when Rule released Blood in My Eye. Not only was the album his weakest-selling to date, it was laced with venom toward his enemies in almost every verse: "DMX was my dog, but now we just dog-fight/ Sucking on a glass d---, calling them crack pipes/ And I'm hearin' you letting yo' health slide these days/ And yo lady's d---ed up and you contracted AIDS/ Who the f--- you callin' gay, n---a?/ You musta' been talkin' to Em' and Dre."

In retrospect, that bitter album seems like Ja Rule hitting bottom. The streets hardly cared and the mainstream responded with deaf ears.

"To me, those records on that album wasn't street records, those were hate records," he said. "The audience for hate music is slim. People don't want to hear that. We got terrorist attacks going on. Nobody wants to hear about all that bad stuff. I can understand why a lot of fans were mad at me. A lot of my male fans were like, 'Yeah, get 'em, Rule!' But a lot of my female fans were like, 'Forget them, Rule, do what we like you to do.' I understood that, but I'm an artist and sometimes it ain't about the money. That's what I felt like saying, how I wanted to put it across. That's why I didn't put none of them other records on there - no party-style records, no records for the ladies, no feeling records. Just 'I hate you.' "

Even though Ja Rule won't be exchanging Christmas gifts with anyone from the opposing camps this year, he's ready to move past the feud.

"I don't even gotta speak on it no more," he insisted. "I feel like I'm not never making another record about these n---as, ever. I don't feel I need to. We wasted a year on making records and sh-- like that. Basically, all n---as is doing is putting on a show for the people, and the show is wack. I listened to the Shyne [song, "For the Record," where he goes after 50 Cent], and Shyne is sh---ing on them n---as. And because the public is so drawn into the show, they can't detect what's real and what's fake. And [Shyne] is saying real sh-- on there. I ain't thinking about that anymore. How many [times] can I say, 'F--- them?' "

Eminem has gone public with similar sentiments. In a recent interview with MTV News, Slim Shady said he was "walking away from the beef."

With all his musical woes all but subsided, you'd think Ja Rule would be breathing easy. But Rule and the Inc. are facing their toughest adversaries yet, adversaries that can potentially end his career and take away Irv Gotti's freedom: the U.S. government.

In January 2003, Murder Inc.'s office were raided by federal agents as part of an ongoing investigation into whether or not Gotti helped his friend Kenneth "Supreme" McGriff to launder drug money. So far, several people associated with the Inc., including Ja's manager, Ronald "Gutta" Robinson, have been indicted on those charges. Although Gotti has never been officially charged with any crime, the investigation hangs over the label's head like the clouds Rule sang about with Mary J. Blige in "Rainy Dayz."

"What I'll say is that I'm on the inside," Ashanti said. "That's my family. People on the outside reading [newspaper articles] may get a little intimidated, but they don't know the half of it. Obviously, it's gonna effect you. On one side you have your records popping, a whole bunch of artists on your label, [and on the other] you may have drama. With us being close, we have each other and that's what keeps us going. It obviously is a lot to deal with."

"It's f---ing nerve-wracking and it's giving us all big headaches," Rule added. "But it's something we gotta deal with. But we're innocent, so our innocence will be proven."

Still, in spite of the turmoil, Rule has been able to flip the strife into a positive: It's become source material for his music. On R.U.L.E.'s "Passion," he raps:

"How unfortunate, January the sixth/ Federal officers raided our offices/ Making it hard for us to eat, to breathe, to live/ And they swear they got n---as that's informative/ They've been handin' down indictments for about a year/ And they sent nobody to jail yet, we still in the clear."

"You just have to block it out and record," he said about making music in the midst of the many dramas he's endured over the last couple of years. "But you have to go in and sometimes use a bad situation to your advantage. Anything that I go through, I use. If it's bad, I'mma turn that bad into a song."