50 Cent and Ja Rule have an rivalry that has only gotten more acute over the years. Often referred to as one of hip-hop’s most notorious rivalries, their feud has given pop culture many remarkable moments, the funniest being 50 Cent buying 200 tickets to Ja's show in Texas, only to leave the front rows empty.
Ja Rule recently admitted that his feud with 50 Cent in the late ’90s and early 2000s deeply fractured the New York rap scene.
Speaking on 7PM in Brooklyn with Carmelo Anthony, the Queens-born rapper said, “Look at Kendrick and Drake." Ja was refercing to the escalating, high-profile rap feud between Kendrick Lamar and Drake which led to Drake suing his and Lamar's shared record label, Universal Music Group, over its role in promoting Lamar's diss track "Not Like Us."
“Nothing good is coming out of any of these things," Ja remarked.
Ja Rule compared today’s rap rivalries to his own clash with 50 Cent and noted that their feud disrupted the sense of unity that once characterised New York’s hip-hop scene.
“Me and 50’s sh*t, that sh*t f**ked up New York Hip-Hop. It really did because it separated a lot of ni**as in New York.”
However, Ja Rule said he considered himself the better rapper. “I feel like I was the better rapper,” Ja said.
However, 50 Cent found more success than Ja Rule having sold over 30 million albums worldwide.
“I felt like I made the better records. I feel like my records aged better, still. So, that’s how I feel inside. I don’t know how everybody else feels.”
“At the end of the day, you’ve gotta kinda love both or you gotta kinda respect both."
Ja Rule further added, “You don’t gotta love both, but you gotta respect both. You gotta appreciate both, and that’s just what it is. Even in rap competitions and battles and beefs and sh*t like that, I have a very different take on it than everybody does. He has a take on it that was his take.”
Ja Rule and 50 Cent reportedly began after a robbery incident involving one of Ja Rule’s associates, which led to escalating tensions between the two Queens rappers. Diss tracks soon followed, and 50 Cent’s “Wanksta” and Ja Rule’s “Loose Change” fueled the fire.
The feud went beyond music, resulting in physical altercations, label rivalries between Murder Inc. and G-Unit, and at the height of the drama, both artists dominated headlines.
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