Squinty-eyed Queens rapper Ja Rule has announced that his eighth solo album titled COUPE DE GRÂCE will be his last. The name refers to the final blow used to kill a wounded person or animal and could be a brave but epic reference to his ongoing beef with 50 cent. Ja Rule hasn’t released an album since he rapped about his experiences dealing with the negative side of fame on 2002’s Pain is Love 2 – a concept he probably doesn’t have as much trouble with in 2016 admittedly, but his leftover fans are well and truly ready for some new material.
He initially announced that he was working on an album in July 2014 citing the name Genius Loves Company. In a Kanye-esque turn of events, Ja Rule has taken to Twitter in the last couple of days to announce the change of name.
Bare with me be patient this is ART I'm creating!!!
— Ja Rule (@jarule) February 20, 2016
My BEST shall be my LAST!!! pic.twitter.com/llVyEZq8bG
— Ja Rule (@jarule) February 20, 2016
The album could haul Ja Rule back into the spotlight, or more likely see him fade back into early 2000’s hip hop nostalgia with J-Kwon and Nelly. In the spirit of that nostalgia, Ja Rule may have preempted this as he toured Australia in July last year alongside fellow Murder Inc. artist, Ashanti.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcP96KbFIIU]
Unfortunately Aussie fans were left disappointed after the pair turned up late to a couple of shows. Relentless complaints were made on Facebook, mostly by punters who attended their second Sydney, claiming they waited 5 hours for a 20 minute set and one crowd member even threw a bottle at Ashanti. I’m not sure he’ll be in a huge rush to get back after that reception but maybe the forthcoming album will be deserving of a world tour.
Image: @ruleyorkcity
Ja Rule recently sat down with VladTV and weighed in on an issue that has been plaguing hip-hop since it’s entrance into the mainstream: white fans using the N-word.
DJ Vlad broaches the subject by initially asking the rapper how he deals with his own children using the word, especially in mixed company, before moving on to question Ja Rule about his opinion on white fans using the derogatory slur.
During the course of the interview, Ja Rule goes back and forth between saying that on one side of the spectrum the word is absolutely not okay to use, while also pondering its popularisation through hip-hop and, as a result, the word’s hateful roots being replaced, almost becoming a term of endearment and friendship. He states that it’s almost inevitable that white fans would be using the slur.
“I’m at a concert the other day. Nothing but white kids at the concert. Metro Boomin is deejaying and shit, right? What does he throw on? ‘All day, ni**a’… And he’s fading the ‘ni**a’ part, and those white kids are singing that ‘ni**a’ word like a motherfucker. You know what I’m saying? I’m up in the balcony dying laughing because I’m like ‘Yo, what do you expect them to do? What do you think they’re gonna do?’ To them it’s a song. They just singing a song, having fun. So, now what do you do? Not play that song when you have a white audience and you deejaying? I don’t know—I really don’t know how to combat this.”
He uses Justin Bieber as an example, talking about the time when a video of the pop star surfaced with him singing One Less Lonely Girl and inserting the N-word into it, elaborating that Justin Bieber managed to get away with it by simply apologising, as he was just a kid at the time, and didn’t know any better.
“He got a pass. He got a pass because we all looked at it like ‘He’s a kid. He doesn’t know no better. He probably doesn’t even know the history of the word.’ But he got a pass, I don’t know why he got a pass, but he got a fuckin’ pass. It’s hard to determine who can say the word, who cannot say the word… The word has a different meaning now. It’s not the same.”
Ja Rule also talks about white fans using the word when singing along to songs, bringing up the aforementioned example about attending a concert with Metro Boomin.
“Like I said when he throws on the record and Kanye singin’ ‘All day ni**a’, and every other-every other word in that song is ni**a… and if you drop out the word, and the white kids sing it, can you blame em’? Are you mad at em’? You know what I’m sayin’? I don’t know, because at that moment, they’re not calling Kanye a ni**a, they not callin’ anybody a ni**a they just singing a song. It’s tough Vlad, you know what I mean, it’s one of those things, we gotta, the black coalition gotta get together and figure this out.”
What’s definitely true is that with the appropriation of black culture, specifically by white youth a hard line should be drawn on just how far the envelope can be pushed before it becomes offensive and insensitive.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5fE56Ysx9w]
Sometimes, the world is a beautiful place. With the festive season well and truly upon us, it is nice to sit back and relax with loved ones and get into the spirit of Christmas. Even though it’s “technically” over for another year, the Christmas spirit doesn’t have to go JUST yet because here is a clip of none other than Ja Rule reading The Grinch – and it’s as incredible as it sounds.
Thanks to BBC Radio 1, this is the Christmas gift you never knew you so badly needed. A recording of Ja Rule’s reading was uncovered and played on Clara Amfo’s December 27 show. While she also played previous Live Lounge performances by Coldplay, Hozier and Paolo Nutini, we have to maintain that Ja delivered something far more entertaining.
There are no words that can truly describe the experience that is hearing this story told by Ja. Not swaying off script, Ja’s deep voice sounds surprisingly fitting for lines like “Poo poo to the Whos“, and for describing the change of heart The Grinch has at the end of the story. The best part is probably after the story itself is done, when Ja Rule literally says “Yay! The gahtdamn Grinch!” because that is a line I never thought I would hear him say. It’s a Christmas miracle if I ever saw (or heard) one.
If Ja Rule ever needs a career change, a career in recording audiobooks is right up his alley. Calls for the four time Grammy nominee to record other stories have already begun on the clip’s YouTube comments, and who wouldn’t want to hear more Dr Seuss as told by Ja Rule?
Image via Google Images
Gone are the days of hip hop stars having but one job title. Wikipedia any rapper today and you can almost guarantee they’ll have some combination of rapper, songwriter, producer, entrepreneur and, a lot of the times, actor. As can be expected with most things in hip hop, there are both excellent and godawful examples of this. We’re breaking them down into best and worst, starting with the Mount Rap-More of shitty acting.
Xzibit
Oh boy, has X been in some real stinkers. Aside from appearing on Pimp My Ride and loudly giving out car makeovers that push the notion of poor taste to its absolute grotesque nadir, he has appeared as an FBI agent in the much-reviled X-Files: I Want To Believe as well as The Rock’s juvenile corrections facility team assistant football coach in Gridiron Gang.
He also appeared in xXx: State Of The Union, the more atrocious sequel to an already highly atrocious Vin Diesel-helmed original. His worst turn by far though has got to be alongside Busta Rhymes in Full Clip.
Ugh, look at that tagline, on a movie poster that my grandmother could cobble together on Photoshop given enough time. You don’t even have to see it to know that it would have taken the swiftest route to DVD possible and probably can’t be purchased outside of a $1.99 clearance bin anywhere.
Even in the one good film he’s been allowed anywhere near, 8 Mile, he enjoyed approximately two minutes of screen time as a homophobic factory worker who gets his ass lyrically beat down by Eminem. Enough already, X.
Ja Rule
Aside from making an entire career out of looking like somebody slammed a door on Tupac Shakur‘s face and bastardising his sound with none of the street cred or intelligence to back it up, Ja Rule has also enjoyed quite the acting career.
His first role in a blockbuster was as the token black street racer in the original Fast And The Furious. He also enjoyed minor but somehow terrible roles in movies for people who don’t like movies, such as Assault On Precinct 13 and Scary Movie 3. He also had a prominent role alongside our Lord and Saviour, Steven Seagal in Half Past Dead.
Steven Seagal movies, perfecting the ridiculous title/tagline combination since the 80s
This is a movie so bad that Steven Seagal’s do-rag is the second best actor in it. Ja plays the wisecracking black cop to Steve’s tough guy straight man cop. It’s… awful, but I will never forgive him for using my beloved New Jersey (now Brooklyn) Nets as a plot device in The Cookout. EVER.
That his character’s name was, in all sincerity, Bling Bling/Percival Assmackey is not even the dumbest thing about this aqua-dump of a movie. Christ.
Queen Latifah
Speaking of The Cookout, here was the woman in charge of producing that atrocity. Coming from an amazing background championing the seldom heard female voice in hip hop, Queen Latifah proceeded to move into the movie business, starring and producing in several films that are probably the reason aliens have made no attempt to contact us thus far.
These include the aforementioned The Cookout, the reprehensible follow-up to Barbershop, Barbershop 2: Back In Business (a colon in a movie title has to be a trigger warning that it’s awful, right?), its even worse spinoff Beauty Shop, Taxi alongside the serially un-funny Jimmy Fallon and the vomit-y Last Holiday.
It’s like the formula behind every single one of her movies is just to take the sass and turn that shit up to deafening levels, by God. I mean, she was admittedly pretty damn good in Chicago and Hairspray, but it’s probably no coincidence that these were both musicals that would showcase her obvious talents much better, and neither make up for the sheer horror that is Bringing Down The House.
If you look into Steve Martin’s eyes, you can almost see him wondering how his career ended up here.
And to top it all off, she had the audacity to use my Nets AGAIN, as an EVEN BIGGER PLOT DEVICE alongside Common in the godawful romantic comedy, Just Wright.
THEY WERE ALREADY TERRIBLE ENOUGH, WHY CAN’T YOU JUST LEAVE THEM ALONE!
DMX
DMX is to crazy what Biggie is to hip hop, simply transcendent, as we’ve detailed before. It’s no surprise that people in Hollywood took one look at this chrome-domed ball of rage and thought that there was an action movie career just waiting to burst forth and complement his angry, angry work in the field of hip hop.
And sure, he shared some screen time with Jet Li in Romeo Must Die, which wasn’t outright dreadful. But the Li/DMX tag team followed up abominably in Cradle 2 The Grave and from there it was pretty much all straight downhill. Apparently Ja Rule turned down the coveted role of being Steven Seagal’s (sans do-rag) African American sidekick in Exit Wounds, so DMX stepped up to the plate… and struck the fuck out.
The best thing from that movie was the unintentional comedy of a DMX cover of the Bill Withers classic, Ain’t No Sunshine (spoiler: it’s terrible). DMX’s last eight films have all been released direct-to-DVD, a streak that’s up there with Tara Reid’s. They’re titled things like Death Toll, Last Hour, Blame It On The Hustle, The Bleeding and the surely amazing Lockjaw: Rise of the Kulev Serpent.
If you only see one movie where DMX shoots a giant snake in the face with a rocket launcher this summer, let it be this one. Give the man an Oscar, immediately.
Up next, we look at the best of rappers turned actors…