King Of Pain

08/13/2002 7:00 PM, LAUNCH
Billy Johnson Jr

Ja Rule's third album, Pain Is Love, released in fall 2001, got lost in the shuffle, but his moonlighting as a songwriter and freelance rapper were paying off big time: By summer 2002, he'd co-written songs for top-selling R&B pop queens Mariah Carey, J. Lo, and Brandy, plus Mary J. Blige, Fat Joe, and Ja's old rap group, CMC (now called Cash Murda Click), among others, were waiting in line to get their dose of flavor from hip-hop's golden boy with the charismatic growl.

But while the music world is consumed with Ja's ancillary works, LAUNCH ventures behind the scenes of Pain Is Love, where the artist explains how the title relates to his role as husband and father, what prompted him to remake Tupac's "So Much Pain," and exactly how he got sucked into the R&B world.

LAUNCH: I understanding you were debating whether or not to record the song "Pain is Love." Can you talk about that?

JA RULE: Well, I wasn't really debating...I had never done a title track to any of my albums, and I wanted to do a title track for this album. And I had the hook for it--I had two hooks for it, actually--and one hook that I wanted to use. I had a beat for it and the next hook that I wanted to use I didn't have a beat for, and so I was scrambling, trying to make a beat for it. Sometimes I'll have a beat in my head. I'll hear the music but I can't always get it out, 'cause I don't make beats. So I'll go to of my producer and be like, "Yo, this is what I'm hearing," and I'll hum it to him and sing him the melody and they he'll try to play it for me. And it's like, they got to master it by Friday, so I don't have that much time to be bullsh-tting around. So it's like, either I'm doing the record or I'm not doing the record and leaving it off the album. It's a vibe--sometimes I catch it, sometimes I don't, and it's rare that I hear a track that [producer Irv] Gotti likes that I don't. It's rare that we don't agree on a track. But this is one of those tracks that we didn't agree on. This is actually the second time that we didn't agree. He didn't like [the Ashanti/Ja Rule collaboration]"Always On Time," either. He didn't like that beat either, and I said, "Man, that sh-t is hot. Give me that one." Now that's my second single. It just happens like that sometimes. I wasn't feeling that ["Pain Is Love"] beat, then I listened to it again and was feeling it. It's crazy like that.

LAUNCH: "Pain Os Love" being the title track, what are you doing with it?

JA RULE: Well, "Pain Is Love" is a record that basically takes you through a story of what the pain of love is. It's the sacrifice, it's the struggle, it's the hardships, all the pain and suffering that you go through for your family, or for your peers that are maybe coming up behind you. Maybe you're paving the way--it's that leadership type of thing, the foundation, the one who goes through everything first. The Jesse Owens type of sh-t. The one who goes through everything so that the next runners that come can receive a little love or get a little respect, like Jackie Robinson. It's what these type of men go through, or really all men go through, because you got to put your family first, and we'll all die for our kids and for our families and for our mothers or whatever. So it's that feeling of "I'll go through it so that you all can see a better day."

LAUNCH: I know you have children, and also got married recently. Do you feel comfortable in that role?

JA RULE: It's a lot of pressure, being a father or being a parent in general. I think the last generation kind of ran away from that responsibility. A lot of my peers don't have fathers, and I think they just neglected that responsibility in that era of time. And now this generation is trying to pick up the slack of where that era left off. I can't see myself not being with my kids. I can't see me not taking care of my kids, not providing for them or anything like that. I can't see it. I don't know if a lot of other fathers are feeling the same, but it's what I'm seeing. I'm seeing a trend of it right now, of where men are taking care of their children. Men are taking responsibility of their children, and that's the way it should be.

LAUNCH: Conceptually, do you feel this is building on your last album, Rule 3:36?

JA RULE: Yeah, it's like I got a whole thing with my albums. I got a five-album series that has been thought of since Venni Vetti Vecci first came out. My first album Venni Vetti Vecci was, "He came, he saw, he conquered," and that theory was about me coming into the rap game and me seeing everything that's going on and me conquering myself--pulling it all together and being able to become a complete artist. I think a lot of people had doubted that I had become a complete artist. A lot of people thought I was a one-hit wonder, that the album was driven by the one single. So I came back with Rule 3:36 and then that message was to let the naysayers know: Hop aboard now or when it happens get the f--k off my boat. So it was that type of situation. Now I'm coming with Pain Is Love, and now maybe I can receive a little love. Or maybe I still go through some pain, and the ones that's after me can receive a little love. My next album is called The Last Temptation. I feel there are certain types of MCs, certain types of artists, and I feel I'm one of the last of those last types of artists that really do it for the passion and for what it is, and not chasing the check. I'm not saying I don't like getting paid for my talent. It's just like a basketball player or an athlete--of course they love getting the money for doing what they do, but you gotta have the passion, you gotta play with your heart. And that's what separates the best from the average. You can tell the ones that's playing with their heart and the ones that's playing for the check, and with music it's the same translation. I look at the artists that's rapping for that check and I know the artists that's rapping from their heart, and I feel like I'm one of the last ones.

LAUNCH: Do you think you've reached a certain level of respect now?

JA RULE: You know, it's crazy, because I'm not that new. A lot of people see me as a fairly new artist. You know, this is my third album, so I guess the "new artist" thing is dwindling away. I've been involved with this rap game, watching and seeing things in the rap game, since like '93, '92. I had a deal with TVT Records and I had a group, Cash Murda Click, and we put out two singles. So I've seen the real low end of it. Trying to do it from scratch, trying to put up your own stickers, waiting outside of the radio stations like Flex: "Please just give me a shot." So I know what it's like to be on a record label and still have to do that sh-t. And then once I got to Def Jam and had my solo project, I knew what it was like to have to go through the struggle of being an artist. So when things started to happen for me, I appreciated it a lot more than other artists do. You know? When other artists come out they blast off and sell a bunch of records, it's sad because they really didn't get to enjoy hip-hop. They didn't get to experience hip-hop. They went straight to pop. Not saying there's anything wrong with it, but it's just you miss an experience, you miss something. You need that. So it's crazy, but I'm glad I had that experience, and now I understand what it is to be in my position. And I watched n-ggas go from here to there and that's why I'm naming my next album The Last Temptation, because I'm one of the last real artists out there. And the fifth album I'm naming Venni Vetti Vecci again, because hopefully by my fifth album I would have came and saw and conquered again.

LAUNCH: How do you help new artists that you're developing?

JA RULE: Well you know, it's really easy, because what you see, what you learn, is how you are going to do the next when they come up. And what I learned coming up as an artist and an MC is to be fair. What's fair is fair, and that's what the artists coming up behind me is gonna learn from me. I'm a fair n-gga. I try to keep everybody tight-knit and family. Me and Gotti try to keep everybody happy so there's no quarrels in the family. At least as less as we can keep it. So I think they see that and they learn from that, and when they break out and they branch out and get their own artists, these are the things they are going to instill in them. It's like parenting--what you learn from your parents, you're gonna teach your kids. It's the same type of sh-t.

LAUNCH: What's been the most painful thing about being an artist?

JA RULE: I don't think people really understand the things you go through as an artist. I'm not talking about the bullsh-t. You hear artists talking about being an artist, about being a celebrity. They whine about being a star, like this is a burden and people come up to you, about your privacy not being yours, of people wanting to know what you're doing with your life. Those are not problems. I'm talking about the privacy of the criminal aspect of life. Other music, like other genres of music, don't go through this, like pop music and alternative music and rock music. They don't go through this. This is strictly rap sh-t. It's like we come from directly out the 'hood, where everybody is trying to come up, and basically you get rich overnight and you move from your 'hood and you move to somewhere else. And that itself becomes a problem. You have no friends where you just moved, so your only friends were from your old neighborhood, so you come back with your nice car and your nice jewelry. You living all right now. So n-ggas start getting jealous, or you get caught up in sh-t just hanging out on the corner. Police may come by and see you and not know you as the rapper yet, because maybe you're not as big as some of the other rappers yet. You know, you got some money, but they don't know you. So they may pass by and think, "He must be the big drug dealer, he must be the king. Get him, roust him." Now the sh-t that happens to the rappers, we just came from the streets, thrown into the credit card world, and so now our mentalities are different, but they're still the same. We may have a little pistol in the car, not for the same purposes as before. You be on the block all day and a n-gga may come up ,and it's not for that reason anymore--now it's for straight protection. Now it's for, "I don't want nobody to take anything from me. I don't have security yet, but I have some nice things, so I know what to do. I'll keep my gun on me." So now it's the thing where, "I don't want to get in no trouble, but I want to protect myself." But that's trouble, 'cause you're in a troubles environment. Because now if police come and bust the whole area, come around and search everybody, and you got a pistol on you, you going to jail. Or you got a bag of weed on you, a bigger bad of weed on you than everybody else because you have a few dollars, and now you go to jail just because you in the wrong environment. I don't worry about those things in the neighborhood where I'm at now--I could walk around all day with a bag of weed where I live now. Cops are not looking for that. They're not riding around in that neighborhood looking for that element. Whereas in my old neighborhood that's all the police do, ride around looking for young men that fit the profile. So it's just a situation where you gotta stay out of the 'hood to stay out or trouble. 'Cause you can be innocently there and get in trouble and that gets pinned on the rappers, and they go see he's up to no good. "What was he doing out there on the block, what was he doing over there? He wasn't supposed to be over there." And they're right--you're not. But that's where all your friends are. So you get in the situation where you like, "I'm going to stay out of the 'hood. I'm going to invite my friends to my house." But you can't invite the whole neighborhood. So now you start picking and choosing which n-ggas get to come and which n-ggas don't. And so the n-ggas that get to come, they all happy. They go back to the 'hood and tell, "Rule's sh-t is nice, he got this, he got that." And now the other n-ggas want to come, but everybody can't come. And so now it starts to breed envy, and it just becomes bigger and bigger problems. Whereas in alternative music, it's not even about the music, it's about the upbringing. You know--you brought up in a f--ked up environment, these are the problems you go through. If you brought up in a better neighborhood, they may be jealous because you got a little more sh-t, but they're not looking to get your sh-t. Because they have some sh-t. It's just a difference. You know? In the 'hood, we don't have nothing. I used to be in the same 'hood where a lot of rappers came from: Lost Boyz, Onyx, LL, Run-DMC. So I seen a lot of rappers in my years coming up, and I seen n-ggas hating, and I used to be on the corner. I used to even be like, "Look at him, coming through fronting with his sh-t. Man, f--k him!" For no reason, just because he has something we don't and that's the reason. That's the hatred you gotta deal with when you live in the urban areas of America. And that's what every rapper goes through, and that's why we have so many problems. And it's not being properly explained by the rappers. You know: "I keeping it real and sh-t. I'm in the 'hood and sh-t." That's clown sh-t. Keeping it real is trying to get ya n-ggas out of the 'hood, trying to show them the better sh-t that's on the other side, so they can get a better way of thinking. Like, "You know what? I want what Ja got. I want a nice house, so maybe I should stop doing this, maybe I should get a job with Ja or try to do something better than what I'm doing." That's what I try to instill in all my n-ggas when I go to the 'hood. I go and pick them up: "Let's get outta here. 'Cause we're going to jail if we stay around here today. If we stay here today, let's go hang out somewhere else." And that's what I try to do: show my n-ggas something else. Like, I'll go get a mansion out in L.A. and bring all my n-ggas out there. Like, we can't all go to my house and f--k up my sh-t, but we can all go to the mansion that we rented out in L.A. and we can go out there and hang and sh-t. I'll bring 15 of us out there and some us will stay in the hotel, but we got the house every night we party--we have some good times, it's a great time. And I did that for like, three months out in L.A. making 3:36 and we loved it. We had a good time.

LAUNCH: It's a cultural thing, because any black person with money goes through that.

JA RULE: Yeah, athletes…it's a cultural thing. If you live in a f--ked up environment, man, that's the problems you have to deal with, those are the situations you have to go through. But it's different for athletes and sh-t like that--you know why? Because their systems are strong. They get thrown in the NBA, they got a strong system. They don't play that bullsh-t. They're not gonna let all these wild n-ggas be around them dudes. It's not happening. They keep them more confined. They monitor them, they watch them. Nobody's watching us. Nobody gives a f--k what we do. "Make that hit record and I'll see you when I see you." That's that. Nobody's watching out for our well-being, nobody cares what we do. Nobody's caring if we get in trouble or not. "Don't get in trouble, but nobody's really watching." We're not in a system, we're just on our own out there to be responsible adults.

LAUNCH: Def Jam is supposed to be setting up a house where artists will train other artists. How do you feel about that? It seems like the labels let them run free.

JA RULE: It's like the inmates are running the asylum. Artists are real temperamental. Once you get an artist that gets to a certain level of his career, they get pampered. Everybody's scared to tell him sh. I just sold me a gang of albums, so if I feel like flick ashes on the floor, I'm going to flick ashes on the floor. And nobody's going to tell me no. It's little sh-t like that, but we do it on purpose because we know we can do it. It's up to them to be like, "Don't flick no f--kin' ashes on the floor. I don't care how many records you sell. Do that sh-t in you own house." It's up to them, but they don't care, they don't care. Their whole thing is, "Give him what he wants so he keeps making them records. Keep him happy." That's the gist of the game. If you're selling records, that's the gist of the game. "Keep him happy." And it creates monsters. There's monsters up there. I'm one of the good ones--I know I can be a monster and be a problem and be bad, and I say, "Nah, f--k it, I'm not doing it." You only hurt yourself, you only hurt your career. This is my life that I'm building. You know, they gave me a chance to do this, and now it's up to me to take it somewhere else. It's not up to them to baby me--even though they do it, it's not their job, and they let you know that it's not their job the minute you're not hot. So it's a game, and you gotta learn how to play the game. Like I said, I'm glad I went through a lot of the other sh-t in order to learn this part of it now. Some artists won't even come and even do their own videos. Like, what sense does that make? It's your own sh-t. They won't even come to their own video. It's crazy!

LAUNCH: This is your third record in the course of two years. How does that work in terms of firing out the next one?

JA RULE: This is the fastest I've ever moved with an album. I think this one was set up this way to move out quickly. I really didn't plan it that way, but it got set up that way once the singles started taking off. "Between Me & You" came out, big single, then "Put It On Me," then "I Cry." Then I'm on a record with J. Lo. You know the machine, they're like, "Hey, we gotta keep this ball rolling. Can you get back in there and knock out Pain Is Love?" Because I had my titles for my albums already, and to them, they're thinking if you have the titles, you have materials. Which is true, but I don't like to tell them that. Like, I got material for The Last Temptation, I even got some material for [the fifth album] Venni Vetti Vecci. But I'm not going to tell them that. I just keep that to myself. I got a studio in my basement. I built that for leverage. If you're serious about your craft, why wouldn't you have the craftmaker in your house, so you can go in there and do it anytime you want? We get million-dollar budgets to do our albums, and, that's really unseen money. They give you this million and you spend it in studio fees and all types of bullsh-t. Some it goes toward the videos, some of it goes towards promotions. You know, it's just a whole lot of ways the money gets spent. So I don't do budgets, I do funds. So whatever's left, I get to keep. The first two albums I didn't get to keep that much, because I did it traditionally and just worked, worked, worked, and there wasn't that much left. So this album I said, "You know what? I made some good money, I'm going to build my own studio and that way I can record anytime I want, I can have my own catalog of records." And if you making hit records, muthaf--kers know what a hit sounds like when they hear it. They like to call them "one-listens." You pop them in, they listen, they say. "Oh sh-t!" They only got to listen to it one time to know it's good. Once you're in the game, you start to learn these things. I've learned a lot, and so I started to build my studio and if I'm feeling my vibes, I go in and start to make records. And I'm building a catalog of records. And so in Def Jam goes: "You know; Ja, we need that next album." I can say, "Sure I can give you that next album--here it is. Give me my million dollars and I'm going to throw that in my account. I don't need to go into the studio. It's done. And it's done on my expense. I pay my own light bills, don't worry about that." And it's a beautiful thing. That's my leverage. And I even got more of the leverage because I have the records and they're mine, because I own the publishing. So any record that I make in my basement is my record. You will never know that that record is made if I choose not to let you know that record is made. You know, so I could have a smash, I could have "Put It On Me" sitting in my basement right now, I could have another smash record just sitting in my basement right now, but you're not getting that one--you getting these, this album right here. If you want that one, it's gonna cost you. And now I already have the million-plus that I had for the budget and I can squeeze them for extra 'cause they know what the hit sounds like. And believe me they want the hit records cause they want to make their money. So I've created a squeezeplay for myself, and that's what the game is about. It's hard to get on top of them on the business. So you gotta use your ways to do what you do. I'm making a run to the finish line to do what I gotta do.

LAUNCH: Did you have any reservations about doing "I'm Real" with Jennifer Lopez?

JA RULE: No, I wanted everyone to know I did it. When I did the record, it was kind of awkward at first. My first chance ever to pen something for R&B was with Mariah Carey. Mariah gave me my first chance first. She called me in to record on her Glitter album, and we did it and it came out hot. It was me, her, and Nate Dogg. But Mariah didn't choose to go with it as her first single, she chose to go with the other record. It's not my business to call what record gets put out there, but I felt my record should have went first, and obviously her and her company didn't feel our record should go first, so they picked another record. So I got a call from J. Lo and them and they heard the record that I did for Mariah somehow, and they thought the record was incredible. So they were like, "We want you to do a record for J. Lo's new single, 'I'm Real.'" But they said, "We need it now. Like, right now." They were shooting the video Saturday and it was Thursday when I got the call. And so I was like, "What the f--k? Are you serious?" And so they bring the record over and drop it off with no instructions or nothing. "Just do what you want, Ja." And that was the whole awkward thing about it, like, "What do you mean, do what you want?" I had never written a whole R&B record and it just shocked me.

LAUNCH: Going back to the money thing, are you careful with your finances?

JA RULE: I done a lot of things with the money that I've made so far and made a lot of good choices. I've made a lot of bad choices, too. I'm only 25, so I'm going to do some silly sh-t. But I've done a lot of good things with my money. I'm looking towards the future in life. Not so much for myself--because I don't feel like I'm going to be around forever, not even for as long as I want to be around, because it's just this lifestyle. It doesn't call for that. It's just crazy, I don't even want to think about that. It's a crazy life we live, so I'm thinking more or less for my kids, for my moms, for my wife. So if I'm not here or, God forbid, something should happen tragically or whatever, they're going to have something. They're not going to be like, "Oh my God, he's not here, there's no more money."

LAUNCH: Speaking of tragedy, I want to touch on Aaliyah's recent death...

JA RULE: Actually, I was in L.A. when it happened. Me and Aaliyah was good friends. I was out in L.A. when I heard the news and you know, you don't know how to react to sh-t like that, because it wasn't her time to go. It's a crazy incident, an airplane crash--you don't expect people to really die that way. You only hear about it happening, but you don't expect people to really die that way. But you know, once again, life lets you know how real it is. It's just hard. The first thing I did when I heard the news was I called my mother and called my wife, just to say, "I love y'all." Anything can happen, so I just called them to let them know that I love them, 'cause anything can happen to me too.

LAUNCH: Speaking of artists gone before their time, can you talk about why you remade the Tupac song "So Much Pain" for Pain Is Love?

JA RULE: That particular song, my friend was on that song with 'Pac. I knew 'Pac, I had met 'Pac a few times with my friend Stretch, the other guy that was on that record. He was from my neighborhood, and that was like a song that people never heard because it was on the Above The Rim soundtrack but it was only on the cassette. And I was up on the record because Stretch was from my 'hood, so naturally once he did the Tupac record he's like, "Yo, you gotta hear the record I did with 'Pac, you gotta hear the record I did with 'Pac." So I was in love with the record, always knew about the record and I always thought it was one of Pac's best records. So I redid the record--just memory and paying homage to Stretch and 'Pac. Like I said, I didn't know 'Pac like that, I only met him a couple times, but Stretch was my friend. But it was a feeling for me to pay homage to him. But I had to get clearance from Afeni [Shakur, Tupac's mother] and Suge [Knight, of Death Row Records], and they said, "We're gonna get you this record and let you have it because we feel you genuinely have a love for 'Pac and genuinely are doing this in homage to 'Pac. If we thought you were doing this to get something, gain something from it, you would never do it. You understand." Like I said, it's the feeling that cuts through. They don't feel like I have any intentions to try and sell extra records by having this record on my record. I just wanna have it on there to pay homage to one of the best MCs to ever touch the mic. And that's all, and they understand that 100 percent. They didn't ask me for no money, not at all. They just gave it to me and said, "You have our blessings."

LAUNCH: You've obviously come really far to command that kind of respect.

JA RULE: Well, you know, it's growth. You come in and you start learning. You start learning how to make better music as well as learning the business. It's like Michael Jordan winning his first championship. He could have been satisfied and said, "I won, I did it," but that doesn't satisfy everybody. They want to challenge themselves and say, "I want to see if I can win two, or I want to see if I can win three." Some people call it greed. I don't look at it like that; I look at that as self-motivating. You know, it takes a lot to self-motivate; you know when you're in a certain position, you feel you are the best at what your doing. I want to get better. I think it takes a certain person to get better. And that's all I wanted to do, from [the first album] Venni Vetti Vecci to 3:36 to Pain Is Love. I want to get better, I want to make better records, I want to make better music. Like, when "Between Me & You" came out, "Holla Holla" came out. The question was, "Can he make a record as big as 'Holla Holla'?" Everybody always wanted me to make another "Holla Holla," another anthem-type record. But I refused. I'm not going to make another "Holla Holla," because I don't want to be labeled "Holla Holla Man," like I can only make these type of records. And I can't make another "Holla Holla." I refuse. So I didn't--I made "Between Me and You"s and "Put It On Me"s and "I Cry"s, and then they were looking at me crazy. Like, "That's not 'Holla Holla'! We're not sure that's going to work!" But my challenge was to make a record as big as "Holla Holla" and have it be as big as "Holla Holla." And then the same thing with "Between Me & You"-- I make a record as completely different from "Between Me & You" and make it even bigger than "Between Me & You." It became that challenge for me, to see if I could make different kinds of records and take them to new levels. And that's kind of the challenge I'm in now. "I'm Real" is the biggest radio record in the history of music. I'm like, "Well, that's a pretty tough one, I don't know how I'm going to shake that one." But I'm gonna try. I just want to exceed my last, whatever I've done last. They say you're only as hot as your last record. Well then, I'm gonna keep making hot records, muthaf--ka.