Ja Rule
For about three years every slow jam on the radio had Ja Rule growling the verse and Ashanti or Jennifer Lopez singing the hook. Then 50 Cent showed up, the feds raided Murder Inc., and the whole Murder Inc. era ended almost as fast as it began.
Jeffrey Atkins was born in Queens on February 29, 1976, and started out in 1994 in a group called Cash Money Click, produced by a DJ named Irv who would become Irv Gotti. When Gotti landed his own Def Jam imprint, Murder Inc. Records, in 1997, Ja Rule was its flagship artist. He wrote the hook for Jay-Z's "Can I Get A..." in 1998, a track that had been planned as his own debut single until Jay-Z asked for it, and his real debut, "Holla Holla," came in March 1999. Venni Vetti Vecci reached number three and went platinum.
The formula that made him a star arrived with Rule 3:36 in October 2000, which traded hardcore rap for radio-ready pop-rap and debuted at number one. "Put It on Me" with Vita and Lil' Mo reached number eight and became the first video retired from BET's 106 & Park after more than 60 days on the countdown. Pain Is Love, released October 2, 2001, also debuted at number one with 361,000 copies in its first week and went triple platinum. Its "Always on Time" with Ashanti spent two weeks at number one in early 2002, on a 7 Aurelius beat from a CD that, by Ja's telling, had been thrown in the garbage before he fished it out. The "Murder Remix" of Jennifer Lopez's "I'm Real" topped the chart for five weeks that fall, and "Ain't It Funny" went there too. Between 1999 and 2005 he put 17 songs on the Hot 100.
The Last Temptation and its number-two duet "Mesmerize" followed in late 2002, but by then the feud with fellow Queens rapper 50 Cent was peaking, with both men trading insults and diss tracks on radio almost daily. On January 3, 2003, FBI agents and NYPD officers raided the Murder Inc. offices in a money-laundering investigation tied to Kenneth "Supreme" McGriff. Ja answered with "Loose Change" that April, 50 and Eminem fired back with "Hail Mary," and by October Minister Louis Farrakhan was sitting Ja down to keep it from escalating. The label renamed itself The Inc. days after Blood in My Eye came out that November.
R.U.L.E. arrived in November 2004 and went gold, the greatest-hits set Exodus closed out his contract in 2005, and Def Jam declined to renew the label's deal. In 2013 Ja and Gotti admitted on Hot 97 that the 50 Cent war and the federal case together had damaged Murder Inc. His later Fyre Festival chapter is another story; he was cleared of legal wrongdoing in 2019.
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Shawn Corey Carter rose from Marcy Projects hustler to rap's defining CEO, making the 2000s the decade when hip-hop conquered the boardroom. His Imperial period—from Hard Knock Life through The Black Album and beyond—turned street rap into stadium singalongs and Grammy gold. Jay-Z didn't just make hits; he made an industry, proving rappers could own their own records and empires. The 2000s belonged to him.
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Marshall Mathers from Detroit, a white rapper in a Black art form, exploded into stardom with shock-rap alter ego Slim Shady and relentless rhymes. The blond buzzcut, unapologetic controversy, Dr. Dre mentorship, and hits like 'Stan' and 'The Real Slim Shady' made him the biggest and most polarizing star in music during the early 2000s.
106 & Park
BET's live countdown couch — AJ and Free, a screaming studio audience, Freestyle Friday battles, and the top hip-hop and R&B videos of the day. For fourteen years, this was where rap premieres actually happened.