It's a chilly, overcast afternoon in Manhattan, and the crowd shuffling along West Forty-ninth Street doesn't seem to make much of the large tour bus parked outside Def Jam Records. Inside sits Ja Rule, surrounded by a couple of friends and a cloud of pot smoke. Two weed dealers hang out up front, chatting with Ja's security team; within a few minutes another dealer will stop by sporting a pound bag. The Last Temptation, Ja's newest album, plays endlessly on the stereo.

Ja is polite and patient, even when his manager, an old friend who calls himself Gutta, holds us up for more than an hour. When the bus finally takes off, Ja tells his DJ buddy Life to hook up an Xbox, which Life just purchased after Ja tossed five $100 bills into his lap. Playing as the St. Louis Rams, Ja loses a close game of Madden NFL 2003, then crawls into a bunk and promptly passes out.

Ja Rule has reason to feel a little tired. In the past year, he's been the most visible rapper in the world, bouncing around the globe, riding hits off two albums, writing songs for a dozen artists, snatching up movie roles, appearing at countless award shows and making plans for his own label. With Half Past Dead, Ja now has his first starring role in a feature film, as an Alcatraz inmate begrudgingly assisting an undercover FBI agent played by Steven Seagal.

The whirlwind pace meant he had to write and record The Last Temptation in just twelve days, then write and record three new tracks in two days when legal complications forced him to cut some songs from the album. He's headlining tonight's gig, a radio-sponsored seven-artist bill in Philadelphia, and will soon embark on a nationwide promotional club tour. When he's not puffing a Philly blunt, Ja usually has his cell phone in hand, chatting with his agent about film roles or talking with his lawyer, whom he likes to call "our Tom Hagen."

"I'm always on the road, always busy," Ja says. "I used to love going to the movies. Take the wife, kids. I can't do that no more." This is one of his biggest complaints about his lifestyle -- he's spent quality time with Shaquille O'Neal and Denzel Washington this past year, but not enough time with his wife, Aisha, and two kids, Jeffrey Jr. and Britney, with whom he shares a massive house in West Orange, New Jersey.

Watching Ja lead Jeffrey Jr., a.k.a. Lil' Rule, around the Def Jam offices, wiping his nose and passing him a football that reads GHETTO HEISMAN, it's apparent that Ja hopes to be the father he never had. Growing up an only child in Hollis, Queens, Jeff Atkins dropped out of high school and sold crack for about seven years. He took up rhyming in his spare time, and his deep gravel mixer of a voice and sensitive-thug image attracted fellow Hollis native Irv Gotti. When Gotti founded his own label, Def Jam subsidiary Murder Inc., Ja became his flagship artist.

Since then, Ja has succeeded royally, dropping three platinum albums and nearly a dozen hit singles. "We got a thing that we all say: 'First to $100 million wins!' " Ja says. He won't let slip how much he's worth right now but estimates that he will indeed have scored $100 million by 2006. Ja doesn't flaunt his wealth like P. Diddy or Jay-Z, say, but the signs of opulence are there: The night before, Ja handed his assistant a check for $50,000 just to get himself on the waiting list for a customized Benz, then surveyed blueprints for a huge new pool for his house.

Asked whether he's living the good life, Ja, 26, cryptically says, "I'm living," then refers me to "Rock Star," a guitar-laden track off The Last Temptation. "I made the record to explain the destruction of what it is to become such a big star," he says. "Things happen in a rap star's life, and you have to defend who you are. It's different pressures. I don't think Justin Timberlake has dudes in the hood who're like, 'Fuck you, Justin, I'm gonna shoot your ass.' "

One painful reminder of his roots was the recent murder of Run-DMC DJ Jam Master Jay, who's from the same neighborhood. Ironically, Jam Master Jay had mentored one of Ja's most bitter enemies, the Queens rapper 50 Cent, who recently inked a $1 million deal with Eminem's Shady/Aftermath Records. The details of their feud are murky, although they date back to 1999, when Ja was robbed by a man seen walking with 50 Cent. The tensions escalated a year later, with a scuffle between the two MCs at an Atlanta club.

Ja's most famous beef, though, was with his old friend Earl Simmons, known to the world as DMX, whom Ja met back when he was selling drugs. "We used to battle," Ja says. "That's when me and X got cool. Gotti used to take us to video shoots -- wherever rappers were at. We'd tear 'em apart, too. I don't wanna say no names, because I'm a bigger artist than they are now." Once Ja became famous, DMX turned on him, accusing Ja of biting his style and dissing him relentlessly. Ja does fire back at DMX on "Fuck With Us," from The Last Temptation: "What the fuck's happening, Earl?/You're mad at the world or just me, because I'm on top on the world/Crack addict, you know the nigga world ain't having it."

"I heard he has a drug problem," Ja says. "I hope he gets better. I'm not a dude to kick a man when he's down." Gotti adds, "[DMX] brought it on himself. Murder Inc., we're peaceful guys. You know how we strike back hard? Sell 10 million. We're gonna keep getting his cash." DMX, through his publicist, refused to comment.

Back on the bus, Ja doesn't roll out of his bunk until we pull up at the First Union Center in Philly. Once backstage, he lights another blunt, takes a call from his wife, then drags his posse back to the bus to give Busta Rhymes a preview of The Last Temptation. Rhymes nods his way through all the songs, which come in two varieties: thugged-out bangers and pop-friendly love songs, usually featuring a comely hook girl. The best of the latter type is "Mesmerized," featuring Ashanti, but Rhymes' favorite song seems to be one of the bangers, the Neptunes-produced "Pop Niggas." "Can I get in on the remix?" Rhymes asks. "I want in. I'll blow it out!"

When Ja finally takes the stage, all forty or so of us waiting in the wings follow him, forming a sort of wall behind Ja while Gotti joins him up front. The show is a standard hip-hop festival set list -- lots of hits, lots of opportunities for the crowd to sing along, and one key guest appearance, by Ashanti.

When we arrive at the hotel in Philly, Ja sprints through the driving rain, pausing outside the door to sign a few autographs. He says he's going out clubbing, but once he reaches his room he orders a sandwich and flips on the Lakers game.

The next morning Ja apologizes for not showing me a good time the night before. When the bus takes off for New York, he asks if I think he bites his style from DMX; I say no, that he vibes Tupac a lot more, and Ja assents that Tupac is probably his all-time favorite MC. But Ja doesn't seem much like the new Tupac -- despite the feuds, he doesn't have Tupac's talent for trouble, plus he's a happy, good-natured guy, more of a family-conscious businessman than an artist.

Still, he thinks the Tupac comparison runs deeper than rhyming style. "You see these things that have happened to Biggie, happened to Pac," Ja argues. "Maybe I'm not such a severe form, but I see the destruction starting to head my way. And I don't know how it's gonna end up." But are we more likely to see Ja lying in a morgue or laughing all the way to the bank? "I'll let Forbes tell the story," Ja says, then leans back, content, as pot smoke and deep laughter fill the air.

[From Issue 911 — December 12, 2002]