As 50 Cent insinuates, Ja Rule is a Wanksta. Call me slow, but I did not realize that 50 was making reference to the pop commodity that has become Ja Rule in his debut video. If anyone else is stuck in my slow shoes, take notice that the Wanksta doll in the video is wearing a gold guitar around his neck, the same piece of jewelry that Ja Rule wears only the one he dons is platinum rather than gold.
I have to agree with 50 on this point. Ja Rule entered the hip-hop scene with so much angst and emotion. You could hear the emotion in his voice not only on his album “Venni Vetti Vecci,” but also on his guest spot on Jay-Z’s record “Can I Get A …,” it’s ironic how times have changed. Ja Rule went from being an unrecognized face who loomed in the shadows struggling to get his image together. In watching the video, I couldn’t figure out whether he was trying to be Tupac, DMX or a mixture of both.
Now Ja Rule has realized his dream rather than making guest appearances on other artists’ songs to make himself seen. He now demands top dollar to secure that he will catapult into the world of bubble gum and soda fizz. Rather than composing rhymes with meaning, he has now concocted a serum that seems to work for him. This formula consists of him + Ashanti (or another female artist to sing the hook) = hit. I guess I can’t put him down for sticking with something that works for him. As the saying goes, “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” I can’t seem to shake the feeling that Ja Rule still posesses those skills he once exhibited to us in his early days.
Last night, I sat down to watch a rerun of BET Tonight with Ed Gordon featuring Ja Rule. Ja Rule proceeded to make me lose more respect for him. When Ed asked him why he turned down the role in the second installment of “The Fast and the Furious” even though they “beefed” up his role from the one sentence he had in the original, he said that as an actor he has to learn how to turn down a role. He said all this and in the next sentence he talked about how great a movie “Half Past Dead” is and what an honor it was for him to work with Steven Seagal and Morris Chestnut. Is he serious? No, I did not see “Half Past Dead,” but did I really need to, to know what the outcome was? I’ve seen more than one of Steven Seagal’s movies and that’s enough for me.
With musicians like Nas, who are creating classic records and actually addressing important issues like the death of a loved one and self-motivation in a creative way by using thought provoking metaphors and other methods, it makes me wonder how Ja Rule would categorize himself. Personally, I’d put him in the bargain bin. I’m sick of hearing his recycled entities.
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