In the early 2000's I was a huge gangster rap fan. I knew all the slang terms for different kinds of guns and drugs. As my mom drove me to my suburban high school I would put on the Top 40 radio station to listen to the newest gangster rap from artists like Dr. Dre and Eminem. It was a golden age.
Then Ja Rule showed up on the radio. Instead of rapping about shooting people he was rapping about how much he loved some girl. And all of his singles went to #1. He actually did a self-replacement at #1 on the charts where he had a #1 song and it fell to #2 because a different song of his reached #1. Today it is routine for hip-hop singles to reach #1 but then it was really rare. I was furious, but I was in the minority. The country had fallen for the soulful thug Ja Rule.
A few years ago I heard Ja Rule again on an oldies station. You know, it sounded better than the songs the kids are listening to these days. Maybe I was too close-minded in my youth.
BTW here is Ja Rule doing straight-up gangsta rap as a featured artist a couple of years before he made it big. The guy could be gangsta as good as anyone, he just knew there was more money and a bigger potential market in the soulful stuff:
