Jeffrey's Revenge (or Rule Reloaded..?)

“That's the motherfucking first blog on Rule York TV on the iPhizzle cam, nigga. I'm getting a lot of hardcore footage. All you bitch ass niggas out there, I'm letting y'all know I'm coming and I'm fucking, oh, I got a chip on my shoulders this year, bitch."-Ja Rule via Rule York TV

Wow. That's just what we needed. Another rap star with a video camera & a web site to update us on his current activities. Perhaps he's too gangsta for Twitter. Not that I have a Twitter account, so I wouldn't know regardless. The closest I come to tweeting is getting pointless messages from my wife via Blackberry Messenger. To which I respond, "I'll see you when you get home." Somebody let me know when Jesus Christ signs onto Twitter though. That way, I can get a heads up on Judgment Day.

Ja Rule's using his fresh-out-the-box vlog to announce his re-entry into the Hip Hop foray. Can't say that I'm excited, but I bet Ashanti is. It'll give her relevance again. God knows she was a huge piece of Curtis' campaign collateral damage. In fact, ALL of Murder Inc. Records was. Even a shirtless, oiled-down, underage Lloyd wasn't strong enough to carry Irv Gotti's wet dream. Rule's stardom revolved around RnB thuggery & Fat Joe pseudo-fan overflow. If Tupac & DMX had've conceived a lovechild, Jeffrey Atkins would have been it. He was good at what he did, too; giving homothugs coast to coast something to hum while they got their next neck tattoo. But, thanks to the relentless Terminator rapper (Get it? Shoot him & he still keeps coming atcha!), all those good things came to an end.

Until now.

“Nothing fucking stale, nothing faded, brand new, nigga. Get ready. I'm lettin' y'all niggas know, man, you got about 60 to 90 days then I'ma put my dick in your mouth, man. Watch yourselves homies, telling you!"-Ja Rule via Rule York TV

No Homo?

Todays market is rife with emo-rap mercenaries who are hellbent on proving a point. Gangsta rap has taken a (May)back seat to lip rings & liquid denim. Our biggest 2 proponents of such music are M.I.A. (Fif & Ro$$), leaving just enough room for a little dude to sneak in & [re]claim a spot in the light. Enters Ja Rule. In the same breath, this cat busted guns & nuts without provocation. & from the sounds of his, umm, digital warning shots fired, he'll be back on his bullshit within a few short months.

The only good I see coming from this is 50's reaction. This may be exactly what the G-Unit machine needs to leave the office building & go back into the gutters it crawled out of. I, for one, am excited [||]. I never saw the Ro$$/50 battle musically escalate to the same proportions as 50/Ja. & one point, it seemed as if Lloyd Banks was doing all the footwork lyrically, while Curtis wrote stand-up routines for his James Brown-meets-Rick James character Curly. For whatever reason, 50 never delivered the final blow to make Rick feel a need to shave his beard, lose 138 lbs., & relocate to Europe with his career, like many predicted. He almost, but not quite, got Ja Rule'd.

I've always said that Ro$$ was too stupid to know he lost, & in an "ignorance is bliss" type way, he couldn't be defeated. He's like the Cheddar Bob of coke rap.

But in this case, Fif mega-ethered Ja's career. Fuck a knock out, dude's been in a coma. Now, years later, audaciously, Jeffrey wakes up flailing wildly for all the Net to witness, as if the real Ja Rule fans bought hyperbaric chambers & stayed 16 years old through cryogenic stasis for the last 7 years. Sorry about the sci-fi nerdgasm.

Curtis Jackson has to be pissed.

So, maybe this is the motivation needed for a trip back to the Dollar/GRODT/mixtape days. 50 could easily sit back & allow Rule to hit the ground running, confident that he made this man go Bin Laden; rarely being seen & occasionally throwing darts from a cave somewhere in East Bubblefuck. Or, 50 could take every single thing that Ja says from this day forward as a personal attack & get all "G-G-G-G-G-G-Unit!!" on that dude. Suffice it to say that most of us would prefer the latter. Put down that neck tie & pick up a bandanna, per se.

Ja Rule has admitted himself in interviews that when one is so innovative that a whole industry bites their blueprint, its hard to re-emerge, hence the “Nothing fucking stale, nothing faded, brand new, nigga". What does that mean? Auto-tune? No Dice. That would surely be hustling backwards & the well deserved nail in a coffin 50 lowered into the Earth years ago.

True, the crowd loves the underdog, but, in this scenario, who exactly would that be? The man with something to prove, or, the man with nothing to lose?

Maybe, just maybe, 50 still has some gas in his reserve tank. Then again, maybe Ja's been training like Rashard Evans to knock out Chuck Lidell. Sometimes, legends do fall.