The Love Thug
Its with some trepidation that I put up a track from Ja Rule.
Its with some trepidation that I put up a track from Ja Rule. I know, I know, Ja Rule is a joke. He was a mediocre rapper to begin with and things went downhill from there after he ended up on the wrong end of perhaps the most one-sided lyrical battle ever, a battle that 50 Cent used to raise himself up to platinum status. Then he went and signed up with Suge Knight, and as we all know no artist has ever benefited from that relationship, either financially or musically.
Anyway, this is the unreleased version of Ja Rule's Extasy. I am putting it up because it uses on of my favorite samples of all time, and the Barry White sample easily outshines Ja's performance on the track. I'm not sure if Murder Inc. decided it wasn't in their budget to license the full sample or if Barry White did not want to attach himself to an ode to a club drug, but the album version only used two or three notes from this sample. The one good thing about this track is the full Barry White sample, so the version on the album ended up being almost unbearable.
Just to balance out this post, and perhaps earn back some of my credibility, I'm also putting up an Eminem diss track directed toward Ja Rule, over Tupac's Hail Mary beat. On the track he specifically mentions Ja Rule's infatuation with ecstasy. This was a common theme used by Em whenever he dissed him, that Ja Rule had fallen off due in large part to his excessive use of the drug -- a somewhat ironic accusation considering his own, more recent, trip to rehab to deal with an addiction to sleeping pills.
(tracks after the jump -->)Ja Rule's Extasy (original version)
Eminem, 50 Cent and Busta Rhymes' Hail Mary Remix
For a brief period, around 2001, there was a fixation in hip hop with ecstasy. Not to the extent that rappers were running around with pacifiers and glo-sticks, but a reference to "X" was almost as mandatory as name dropping various brands of expensive champagne. That didn't last too long though, and today the only time you'll really hear extended references to ecstasy are from songs coming out of the Bay Area, with the Hyphy offshoot of "thizz" raps.