Ja Rule: Fear of prison fueled 'supernatural' recording sessions for ‘Pain Is Love 2,’ his new album
Serving time on gun charge, rapper vows to be there for his three kids
Jeffrey Atkins aka Ja Rule spoke with Joanna Molloy (not pictured) of The News, while he is serving his sentence at the Mid-State Correctional Facility
ja Rule knew he didn’t have much time to record the last cuts of his long anticipated-album, “Pain Is Love 2.” Cops had found a gun in his Maybach and he’d been convicted of attempted gun possession. He was about to start his sentence.
“My back was against the wall,” Ja Rule told the Daily News in an exclusive interview Tuesday. “I didn’t think we’d have time to do what I set out to do, but it came together much better than I could ever imagine.”
Ja’s fans couldn’t agree more. In 24 hours, Hype Williams’ music video of “Real Life Fantasy,” his duet with Anita Louise, got 3 million hits on WorldStarHipHop.com. Fans will soon hear the rest, like his virtuosic rap “Pray for the Day,” the heartfelt “Drown,” and the lushly produced “Superstar,” Ja’s musing on fame, when the album drops Feb. 28.
Channel 7, who produced “Pain Is Love 2,” told The News there was a synergy in the studio that felt “supernatural.”
“Anyone who was a part of those sessions felt the intense creative energy in the room, and knew we were on a mission,” 7 recalled. “I remember at the last session, at one point the studio assistant got really choked up and emotional. He admitted that witnessing Ja record this album with everything happening with the prison bid looming, yet still staying so focused, inspired him to have the strength to deal with his own issues. I felt that... we all did.
“‘Pray For the Day’ was playing on the big speakers and Ja was like, ‘I said what I needed to say to the fans. I’m ready.’
“We all knew he was going to prison the next day. It was a heavy moment. I think everyone in the room was pretty overwhelmed.”
"This record is a labor of love," said Ja's spokeswoman Melanie Bonvicino. "He knew he was going to jail."
At Mid-State Correctional Facility, the steel doors slam with a jarring clang. They’ve shut behind Cormega, Prodigy, a Supreme Court judge, and CEO Dennis Kozlowski, who all got out, as Ja Rule will in a year.
Turning Stone Resort and Casino is just down the road, but for now, Ja’s luck has temporarily run out. In those unmistakable stentorian tones, he tells The News he’s making the best of it.
“I didn’t know how strong I was,” Ja says. “My uncle sent me a poem about an oak tree doing battle with the wind, which breaks its limbs and tears its bark, but it’s still standing, because of its strong roots. It’s a metaphor for life.”
Ja’s roots are in Hollis, Queens, where he was born Jeffrey Atkins on Leap Day 36 years ago.
When he was 5, his sister died, and his father left. “It was hard on my mom,” he says. They got an eviction notice on the door, and his mother, Debra Atkins, went to work sometimes double shifts as an aide at Creedmoor Hospital. He got into fights “every day” in kindergarten — perhaps a harbinger of feuds to come, and Ja went to live with his grandparents, also in Hollis.
Like his mother, they were Jehovah’s Witnesses.
“My mother would go out with her co-workers from the hospital, and Jehovah’s Witnesses believe you can’t associate with ‘worldly people.’ So she was what they call “disfellowshipped’ — she had to go to the Assembly Hall, but nobody was allowed to talk to her. Even my grandparents. So when I was 11, I said, ‘We’ll be disfellowshipped together,’ and I went back with her.”
He had been bused to a predominantly white school, and made close friends, but as soon as he hit middle school, “it was as if we’d never talked,” says Ja. “It was weird. We still said hi to each other, but didn’t go over to each other’s houses. It was the first time I noticed color playing a part. Growing up in those times, black and white was like oil and water — they didn’t mix.”
One good thing came out of middle school: He fell in love with Aisha Murray, to whom he is still married. But with his mother working overtime at Creedmoor, Ja says, “That left me plenty of time to get into mischief.
“I did what a lot of young black men do — I started to hustle, selling drugs, doing the wrong things with the wrong crowd. That’s what you encounter, what you grow up around.”
But on 205th St. and Hollis Ave., a new form of hip hop was being born, and it changed Ja.
“I was blessed to see Run DMC, to see something else,” Ja ruminates as he looks out the window of the visiting room. “Instead of trying to be the biggest drug dealer, I kinda chose another path.”
He snowballed right down it into one hit after another, first with “Venni Vetti Vecci” with his group Cash Money Click, then solo top 20s with Ashanti, Christina Milian, and “I’m Real” with Jennifer Lopez on Irv Gotti’s Murder Inc. label. His 2001 album “Pain Is Love,” a motto tatooed on his shoulder, went triple platinum. Then came the TV and movie parts, including “The Fast and the Furious.”
Ja is philosophical about all that on “Pain Is Love 2.” On “F— Fame,” he raps, “It’s a big world out there / If God could only shine His light on me / And the world was so cold / I couldn’t recognize myself.” And on “Spun a Web,” he raps, “I’m back where I started / A prisoner of my own success.”
“People think being famous is so glamorous, but half the time you’re in a strange hotel room, living out of a suitcase,” he says, laughing ruefully.
While he loves performing live and meeting the fans, he was touring 200 days a year at one point, away from Aisha and their three children: Brittney, 16, Jeff 2nd, 11, and Jordan, 8.
“There were years in a row when I wasn’t home for Thanksgiving,” he says. Visiting every weekend, they almost see him more now.
His children ask him, “Why don’t we have grandpas?”, he says. “My wife’s father also left when she was young. I want to break the cycle. I say, you got Dad, and Dad ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
He has his children’s, his wife’s, and his mother’s birthdates in Roman numerals tatooed up his arm, and “I left room on my shoulder for my father’s. I’m going to add his.” He’s written a song, “Father Forgiven,” still yet to be recorded.
He’s making the best of his time now, starting college courses this month after passing the high-school equivalency test in December. He’s writing a sitcom which Tracy Morgan’s company will produce. And when he gets out, he wants to talk to kids and young prisoners about guns.
“It’s very sad that I’m here for a gun charge,” Ja muses, his eyes exuding intelligence. “I know guns are very bad, and it’s gotten worse. In my old neighborhood, it’s like a battle zone with Crips and Bloods who weren’t there when I was growing up. Maybe Plaxico Burress [who also did time on a gun charge\] and I can start a new foundation. I think it’s time that we all be there for the children, to learn from the ones who came before us, and to teach our sons and daughters to have respect for themselves. Break the cycle.”
And turn pain into love.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertai...-queens-roots-article-1.1015885#ixzz1lFzI8CPK
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertai...-queens-roots-article-1.1015885#ixzz1lFytZTV8
Serving time on gun charge, rapper vows to be there for his three kids
Jeffrey Atkins aka Ja Rule spoke with Joanna Molloy (not pictured) of The News, while he is serving his sentence at the Mid-State Correctional Facility
ja Rule knew he didn’t have much time to record the last cuts of his long anticipated-album, “Pain Is Love 2.” Cops had found a gun in his Maybach and he’d been convicted of attempted gun possession. He was about to start his sentence.
“My back was against the wall,” Ja Rule told the Daily News in an exclusive interview Tuesday. “I didn’t think we’d have time to do what I set out to do, but it came together much better than I could ever imagine.”
Ja’s fans couldn’t agree more. In 24 hours, Hype Williams’ music video of “Real Life Fantasy,” his duet with Anita Louise, got 3 million hits on WorldStarHipHop.com. Fans will soon hear the rest, like his virtuosic rap “Pray for the Day,” the heartfelt “Drown,” and the lushly produced “Superstar,” Ja’s musing on fame, when the album drops Feb. 28.
Channel 7, who produced “Pain Is Love 2,” told The News there was a synergy in the studio that felt “supernatural.”
“Anyone who was a part of those sessions felt the intense creative energy in the room, and knew we were on a mission,” 7 recalled. “I remember at the last session, at one point the studio assistant got really choked up and emotional. He admitted that witnessing Ja record this album with everything happening with the prison bid looming, yet still staying so focused, inspired him to have the strength to deal with his own issues. I felt that... we all did.
“‘Pray For the Day’ was playing on the big speakers and Ja was like, ‘I said what I needed to say to the fans. I’m ready.’
“We all knew he was going to prison the next day. It was a heavy moment. I think everyone in the room was pretty overwhelmed.”
"This record is a labor of love," said Ja's spokeswoman Melanie Bonvicino. "He knew he was going to jail."
At Mid-State Correctional Facility, the steel doors slam with a jarring clang. They’ve shut behind Cormega, Prodigy, a Supreme Court judge, and CEO Dennis Kozlowski, who all got out, as Ja Rule will in a year.
Turning Stone Resort and Casino is just down the road, but for now, Ja’s luck has temporarily run out. In those unmistakable stentorian tones, he tells The News he’s making the best of it.
“I didn’t know how strong I was,” Ja says. “My uncle sent me a poem about an oak tree doing battle with the wind, which breaks its limbs and tears its bark, but it’s still standing, because of its strong roots. It’s a metaphor for life.”
Ja’s roots are in Hollis, Queens, where he was born Jeffrey Atkins on Leap Day 36 years ago.
When he was 5, his sister died, and his father left. “It was hard on my mom,” he says. They got an eviction notice on the door, and his mother, Debra Atkins, went to work sometimes double shifts as an aide at Creedmoor Hospital. He got into fights “every day” in kindergarten — perhaps a harbinger of feuds to come, and Ja went to live with his grandparents, also in Hollis.
Like his mother, they were Jehovah’s Witnesses.
“My mother would go out with her co-workers from the hospital, and Jehovah’s Witnesses believe you can’t associate with ‘worldly people.’ So she was what they call “disfellowshipped’ — she had to go to the Assembly Hall, but nobody was allowed to talk to her. Even my grandparents. So when I was 11, I said, ‘We’ll be disfellowshipped together,’ and I went back with her.”
He had been bused to a predominantly white school, and made close friends, but as soon as he hit middle school, “it was as if we’d never talked,” says Ja. “It was weird. We still said hi to each other, but didn’t go over to each other’s houses. It was the first time I noticed color playing a part. Growing up in those times, black and white was like oil and water — they didn’t mix.”
One good thing came out of middle school: He fell in love with Aisha Murray, to whom he is still married. But with his mother working overtime at Creedmoor, Ja says, “That left me plenty of time to get into mischief.
“I did what a lot of young black men do — I started to hustle, selling drugs, doing the wrong things with the wrong crowd. That’s what you encounter, what you grow up around.”
But on 205th St. and Hollis Ave., a new form of hip hop was being born, and it changed Ja.
“I was blessed to see Run DMC, to see something else,” Ja ruminates as he looks out the window of the visiting room. “Instead of trying to be the biggest drug dealer, I kinda chose another path.”
He snowballed right down it into one hit after another, first with “Venni Vetti Vecci” with his group Cash Money Click, then solo top 20s with Ashanti, Christina Milian, and “I’m Real” with Jennifer Lopez on Irv Gotti’s Murder Inc. label. His 2001 album “Pain Is Love,” a motto tatooed on his shoulder, went triple platinum. Then came the TV and movie parts, including “The Fast and the Furious.”
Ja is philosophical about all that on “Pain Is Love 2.” On “F— Fame,” he raps, “It’s a big world out there / If God could only shine His light on me / And the world was so cold / I couldn’t recognize myself.” And on “Spun a Web,” he raps, “I’m back where I started / A prisoner of my own success.”
“People think being famous is so glamorous, but half the time you’re in a strange hotel room, living out of a suitcase,” he says, laughing ruefully.
While he loves performing live and meeting the fans, he was touring 200 days a year at one point, away from Aisha and their three children: Brittney, 16, Jeff 2nd, 11, and Jordan, 8.
“There were years in a row when I wasn’t home for Thanksgiving,” he says. Visiting every weekend, they almost see him more now.
His children ask him, “Why don’t we have grandpas?”, he says. “My wife’s father also left when she was young. I want to break the cycle. I say, you got Dad, and Dad ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
He has his children’s, his wife’s, and his mother’s birthdates in Roman numerals tatooed up his arm, and “I left room on my shoulder for my father’s. I’m going to add his.” He’s written a song, “Father Forgiven,” still yet to be recorded.
He’s making the best of his time now, starting college courses this month after passing the high-school equivalency test in December. He’s writing a sitcom which Tracy Morgan’s company will produce. And when he gets out, he wants to talk to kids and young prisoners about guns.
“It’s very sad that I’m here for a gun charge,” Ja muses, his eyes exuding intelligence. “I know guns are very bad, and it’s gotten worse. In my old neighborhood, it’s like a battle zone with Crips and Bloods who weren’t there when I was growing up. Maybe Plaxico Burress [who also did time on a gun charge\] and I can start a new foundation. I think it’s time that we all be there for the children, to learn from the ones who came before us, and to teach our sons and daughters to have respect for themselves. Break the cycle.”
And turn pain into love.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertai...-queens-roots-article-1.1015885#ixzz1lFzMqpsv
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertai...-queens-roots-article-1.1015885#ixzz1lFzI8CPK
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertai...-queens-roots-article-1.1015885#ixzz1lFytZTV8
