Ja Rule was one of the biggest names in music during the early 2000s.
He reached superstar level in 2001 with 3 of his songs getting to no. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
His song Always on Time featuring Ashanti, and his guest appearances on J Lo’s I’m Real and Ain’t It Funny quickly made him a household name.
Ja Rule’s Career
His second and third albums were critically and commercially successful, too.
But some say that Ja Rule’s lucky streak ran out in 2003.
Two major things in his life happened around that time that had a big negative impact on his career.
And things started to go downhill for him.
One big setback had to do with Irv Gotti’s record label that Ja Rule was signed with.
Ranker reported that in early 2003, the offices of The Inc. Records were raided by federal agents because of an alleged connection to money laundering and illegal substances.
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It meant that all of the label’s music ventures had to be shelved.
The parent label, Def Jam, ended up blocking some of Ja Rule’s old music, which temporarily stopped him from earning any money off it.
His name also got caught up in the controversy that was attracting a lot of negative press.
The record label rebranded itself and put out Ja Rule’s 5th studio album, Blood In My Eye, which reportedly didn’t have the same kind of commercial success as his older work.
It was also considered to be a hate album because of all the diss tracks it had on it.
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Ja Rule and 50 Cent Rivalry
Which is connected to another theory about why Ja Rule’s career began to suffer around that time.
According to Bleumag, his sour relationships with other rappers in the industry took a toll on his reputation.
Especially the public feud he had with 50 Cent.
It’s unclear exactly how their rivalry first began.
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Both rappers have given different reasons for it.
Ja Rule told MTV News that he didn’t start the negativity between them.
He said that things went south between them when he was shooting a music video on a street in New York, and 50 Cent came to watch.
He claimed that they ended up greeting each other, but that 50 Cent didn’t think Ja Rule’s reaction was good enough, and that he didn’t like the attention Ja Rule was getting from bystanders on the street, either.
He went on to say that the next thing he knew, 50 Cent was using his music to diss him and other rappers, too.
In his interview with MTV, Ja Rule said that 50 Cent’s strategy back then was: “I’m gonna use other big rappers’ names and diss and downplay them to bring attention to me.”
He admitted that it was a great plan, but all that he was doing was creating hatred for himself from other artists.
When he made a diss record about Ja Rule, he didn’t think it was funny or cool.
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But 50 Cent had a different version of events.
Ja Rule Said, ‘We Ain’t Beefing No More…’
In his memoir, From Pieces to Weight, he claimed that a friend of his robbed one of Ja Rule’s chains, and that was what turned Ja Rule against him.
From the moment that 50 Cent made it big with his 2003 album, the two began publicly insulting each other in radio interviews and releasing diss tracks.
A report by Inquisitr revealed that during a 2011 interview with The Life Files, Ja Rule claimed that the dispute between him and 50 Cent had finally ended.
He told the interviewer “We ain’t beefing no more… He’s doing him, and he’s not thinking about me, and I’m doing me and I’m not thinking about him.”
According to Ranker, in 2013, the two rappers bumped into each other on a flight and hashed things out.
Ja Rule explained that what happened between them was a long time ago, and that they were both all about their money, and their families.
Ja Rule Threw Shade at Eminem and His Family
But 50 Cent wasn’t the only rapper who got into Ja Rule’s bad books.
Ranker also reported that he and Eminem had some back and forth, too.
Ja Rule released a song called Loose Change in 2008 that threw shade at Eminem and his family, and accused him of not understanding ‘Black Pain’.
He reportedly mocked Eminem’s mom and ex-wife.
But the biggest blow he gave was when he questioned what his daughter Hailie was going to be when she grew up.
Eminem responded by releasing his song Doe Rae Me (Hailie’s Revenge), featuring members from his rap group D12.
The song made fun of Ja Rule for imitating Tupac Shakur’s rapping style, and Eminem warned him never to bring up his daughter’s name again.
Bleumag claimed that the public feuding with other big rappers at the time seemingly had a negative effect on his music career.
Ja Rule Started His Own Independent Label
His last few albums with The Inc. Records did not compare to the earlier ones that were released by the label.
In 2009, Ja Rule left his longtime record company.
He started his own independent label, which he named Mpire Music Group.
It was under Mpire that he dropped his 7th studio album, Pain is Love 2, a sequel to his hit 2001 album.
But a report by Complex revealed that the album ended up as one of the lowest first-week album sales of 2012, with just 3,200 copies sold.
Ja Rule’s Time Behind Bars
Ja Rule wasn’t even able to promote the album, because when it came out, he was behind bars.
He’d had some trouble with the law just a couple years earlier.
According to a Reuters article, he pleaded guilty in 2011 to failing to file tax returns over a 5-year period.
He was sentenced to 28 months in prison because he’d reportedly failed to pay $1.1 million in taxes between the years 2004-2008.
On top of that, he was also sentenced to 2 years in prison because of attempted criminal possession of a weapon.
He was eventually released in 2013.
Ja Rule’s Scandals
But that wasn’t Ja Rule’s last run-in with the law.
Ranker reported that in 2015, he was hired by an entrepreneur named Billy McFarland to be the creative head and spokesman for a new credit card service.
It was called Magnises, and its objective was to become an exclusive Black Card with special perks & VIP access for millennials.
Customers paid $250 a year for the service.
But Business Insider released an article about how many of the members said that the perks and rewards they were promised never arrived and were often canceled at the last minute.
A couple years later, Ja Rule was involved in an even bigger scandal.
One that would shadow him for years to come.
He was one of the organizers of the Fyre Festival of 2017 that gained the reputation of being one of the most failed attempts at a festival ever.
Us Weekly reported that the Festival quickly turned from a highly anticipated music event to an infamous disaster.
Ja Rule had once again partnered with Billy.
To drum up excitement, they enlisted celebrities like Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid, Hailey Baldwin, and Emily Ratajkowski to spread the word about the event on social media.
However, when the festival unfolded on the Bahamian island of Great Exuma, it was anything but glamorous.
Attendees ended up with a whole bunch of problems, like a lack of security and food, terrible accommodations, poor medical services, and strained artist relations.
Things got so bad that the festival had to be canceled, leaving many festival-goers stranded on the remote island that they’d paid hundreds of dollars to get to.
It was such a catastrophe that Netflix even released a documentary about the event in 2019.
Ja Rule and Billy were hit with multiple lawsuits.
But in the end, the rapper was never imprisoned for his involvement with the festival mess.
A judge cleared him of any wrongdoing in late 2019.
Ja Rule’s Tour Canceled Due to Criminal Record
Ja Rule still performs and makes music to this day.
In a 2016 interview with AOL, he announced that his 8th album, Coup De Grâce, was going to be his last.
But at the start of 2024, he took to Twitter to announce that he’d signed a deal with a new label that was potentially worth a hundred million dollars.
He also revealed that he had plans for a 25th anniversary tour, which would include places like England, Ireland, and Scotland, and more global dates to be announced later.
However in February 2024, PEOPLE shared that the performances in the UK had been canceled because of his criminal record.
In a Twitter update, Ja Rule wrote that he was so devastated, and he couldn’t believe the UK wouldn’t let him in.
He revealed that he’d spent half a million dollars in production of his own money to put the tour together, only to be denied entry days before his shows.
