♪ Feel, feel, feel it ♪
♪ Feel it ♪
Please welcome Ja Rule.
(audience applauding and cheering)
♪ I only think about you ♪
♪ I know you're tired of being lonely, lonely ♪
♪ So, baby girl, put it on me ♪
♪ On me ♪
♪ What would I be without you ♪
♪ I only think about you ♪
♪ I know you're tired of being lonely ♪
You look nice.
(audience cheering)
Hey!
(audience cheering)
What's happening?
Yeah. You look great.
Thank you, thank you.
You look amazing, as usual.
Thank you. As always.
I wanna give you Shoe Cam.
Put your feet on those feet and model for us.
Oh, I get Shoe Cam, oh.
Yes.
You gotta make 'em dance
when they on Shoe Cam.
Yes, yes.
Hey, hey, hey (laughs).
We talked on the phone the other night.
I called you. Yes.
And he was at home with his lovely wife.
Yes.
Of 18 years, you and Aisha?
Yeah, 18 years.
(audience cheering and applauding)
Oh, that's good.
Sounded like you guys were having a good old time.
I felt like I was interrupting something.
No, you know, you know, we doing our married thing.
Yeah.
You know.
Late night watching shows.
Yeah.
Cuddled up on the little couch there.
And then all of a sudden, I call.
Yeah, that was a great call, that was a great call.
'Cause wifey loves you too.
Yeah, going back and forth.
Yeah.
So you're back on reality TV.
Yeah.
Now how's that working for you?
It's cool, I mean, you know.
Well, I'm executive producer on this one.
Right, right, yes.
(audience applauding)
No, but I was on my last show too.
I was a EP on my last show.
That was my show, the Follow the Rules thing.
This is a spinoff of Growing up Hip Hop
Atlanta, LA, and now New York.
This one's New York.
Was it your idea, your kids' idea?
Like whose idea was it to get on the show?
So, you know, my good buddy, Datari called me.
He's the creator of the show.
Uh-huh.
And he's like, Rule, I'm doing New York.
You know, how we gonna do New York without Rule?
So I said, all right, we'll do New York.
What'd Aisha say?
You know, Aisha's not.
She's not on the show like that.
So she doesn't really care (laughs).
Yeah, what'd the kids say?
The kids are fine with it, they love it.
I had stipulations.
I said, listen, I've watched these shows.
I know how these shows go.
I said, my kids are drama-free kids.
I try to stay drama-free.
How old are they, how old are they?
Like what grades are they in?
So Britney is in the audience here.
She's graduated college.
Oh, Britney, is that you? (audience cheering)
Yeah.
I didn't even realize that was you.
I was just complimenting your whole ensemble.
Hey!
Hey, Britney.
I love that.
Thank you.
She's a Hampton U graduate.
Okay, okay.
(audience cheering and applauding)
Yeah, and she's 24.
And then my oldest son Jeffrey Junior is 19,
and he's in college right now.
He's at Florida South in Orlando.
Who lives with you?
Jordan's the only one left.
Jordan is the last of the kids, so he's with us.
And how old?
He is 16.
How has that changed his life,
going to high school and being on TV?
You know, he's gearing up for college too now.
Yeah, but how do the kids treat him in high school?
Oh, he loves it, he loves it.
You know, he's enjoying it, yeah, he's enjoying it.
(Wendy laughs)
They all enjoy school.
Well, I ain't gonna say they enjoyed school.
But you know. Yeah.
So I texted to Andy when I saw the commercial.
I was watching Married to Medicine
and I saw the tease that you were gonna
be on Watch What Happens Live.
Right. And I wanted to go to sleep.
But I was like, oh, no, no, no, no.
He's coming on our show, you know, next Thursday.
I wanna see what he has to say.
Yeah.
Like, do you keep up with Housewives shows and things?
Like how are you gonna act?
And who's gonna be the bartender?
Right.
You know, who's gonna be co-host with you?
On the show, you admitted that Ashanti
is part of the vocals of the "I'm Real" song,
where I thought it was just you and JLo.
You gotta ask Irv about this.
I tried to call him.
He didn't answer your phone, Irv.
Here's the thing, here's the thing.
Pick up the phone, I was trying to get to it.
Here's the thing, I am the writer.
I wrote the record.
Okay, remember the song "I'm Real"?
Yes.
All right.
So I referenced the record,
but my voice is not a great reference voice
for the singer to actually reference off of.
So we had Ashanti reference the record, which is fine.
I don't understand anything that you're saying.
(audience laughing)
Stop dancing.
You're not understanding what I'm saying.
No. Okay, so listen.
Let me explain something to you.
So if I write the record, right?
Somebody has to sing it.
Yeah.
I'm not a good singer (laughs).
So I sing it because I wrote it.
So I will sing it first.
Listen to me, Jeffrey.
But then somebody else has to sing it, Wendy.
So you called up Jennifer Lopez.
And this is a song by Ja Rule and Jennifer Lopez?
Yes, yes.
So where is Ashanti in the mix?
I'm gonna tell you how it came into the mix.
Well, we only have a short segment.
Okay, I'm gonna tell you.
It's quick, it's simple, it's simple.
So we needed to reference the record
so she can hear the riffs and the way the riffs
and stuff are supposed to be hit.
I can't hit those riffs, I can't him them.
So Ashanti did it, and then it goes to the singer.
And then she sings it, and then that's what you hear.
So Ashanti mimicked the singing.
You sent it to Jennifer Lopez.
Right. And the word is,
is that when it was mixed.
Right.
That they left in Ashanti.
It may have been, I mean, it happens.
It happens on music all the time.
No shade, that stuff happens all the time on music.
Did Ashanti get paid?
I don't know, I don't know.
Why wouldn't you know?
'Cause I'm not the one to do the paying to her (laughs).
Listen, you don't usually get paid to do a reference.
Nobody gets paid to do a reference.
If you didn't write on the record,
or you didn't do any physical performing on the record,
you don't get paid for the record.
Is Jennifer gonna be calling you?
'Cause you're one of the guest stars
that would look great on the Super Bowl stage with her.
(audience cheering and applauding)
Get out there.
I don't know, everybody's asking me.
I don't know why you ask me. You gotta ask Jenn.
Would you like to?
What do you get on the Super Bowl?
20 minutes to perform or something like that?
So it isn't a long time.
I know, and she's dividing
the time between she and Shakira.
Shakira, yeah.
So I don't know how much of performance.
But that's a hit, "I'm Real".
I would love to see that.
I would too, you know?
Not the whole song, just do like 30 seconds.
You only have time to do a piece of the song.
It's the bits and the pieces, you know.
And then after you perform, would you take the knee?
(laughs) Listen.
Listen, I'm with Kaep.
And I also love the NFL.
Who's your team?
New York Giants, unfortunately.
(audience cheering)
We're looking better with Danny Dimes right now, yeah.
Well, we lost the other day.
But we won the other two.
Hopefully we'll win tonight.
We play tonight.
We play the Patriots tonight.
Yeah, we play the Patriots tonight.
Patriots tonight, go, Giants.
Yeah. Okay, the Fyre Festival.
(laughs) I love the way that Wendy just,
okay, the Fyre Festival, okay.
Well, all right. Yeah.
Like I never looked at it like it was your fault.
I look at it like there were--
And that's the way you're supposed to look at it, Wendy.
But you're the only name
that people know on that Fyre Festival.
But the way that I always look at it was,
it was a bunch of very wealthy people who funded the money.
They grabbed the popular name,
you get paid to associate yourself with it.
But the planning, you know,
the tents and the bologna sandwiches.
This disaster. Yeah.
Even if it was successful,
I wouldn't look at that as, yay, for Ja Rule.
But it failed because you're a paid person.
This is the craziest thing about it.
What you just said, is the craziest thing about it.
It's like, damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Yeah.
Because the vision of it was mine.
I wanted to do an amazing festival.
So when they started raising the money and stuff like that,
Ja Rule got kind of pushed to the side of,
you know, making decisions. Okay.
I get that it wasn't my money.
I wasn't putting up the $20,000,000 to make it happen.
Right, right.
So I get that, I was sweat equity, right?
And the idea.
So now (laughs), so now, so now, this thing happens.
But what you just said is the truth.
If it would've went off without a hitch,
everybody would've said,
oh, look at this great thing that they did.
Not Ja Rule thought of it,
came to them with the great idea, and they funded it.
It would've been,
looking at this amazing thing that those people did.
As soon as it blow up.
Yeah, they blame the black man.
Look what Ja Rule did.
(audience laughing)
How does that work?
It happened so long ago, you know?
The world spins so much with Hot Topics,
it seems like it happened so long ago.
Now is everybody in jail but you?
(audience clamoring)
You know what, just Billy.
And here's what people don't realize.
Billy committed a crime.
When you commit crimes, you go to jail.
Oh, so he's in jail? Yeah, he's doing six years.
(audience gasping)
Yes, it's a lot of time.
But he committed a crime.
He defrauded the investors.
But you like the festival idea.
I hear you're trying to plan a festival now of your own.
Because the idea of what I was doing was a dope idea.
Sometimes you get in bad situations
or the wrong partners, as we know.
Yes.
(Ja Rule laughing) (audience laughing)
Hey, hey, right?
And you gotta reset, you know what I'm saying?
Correct, Jeffrey.
And do it right with the right people.
Correct, Jeffrey.
(audience applauding)
Correct (laughs).
(Ja Rule laughing)
Damn it, man.
All right, new music.
Yeah. You.
Yes, December 12th, my new album.
(audience cheering and applauding)
The 12th.
Collabos? Yeah.
I'm gonna have some collabos on there.
I haven't sent out any records for them to get on yet.
But I have some ideas of people I wanna work with.
Well, would you like to work with Ashanti?
That's my sister, yeah.
We gonna do something dope on that album.
Is Irv gonna be involved?
Of course.
Well, he's gonna do some music on the album.
I like you guys' relationship.
Like, I've seen the Growing up Hip Hop,
and there was one particular scene where you're grilling,
just the two of you were sitting
on the back patio just talking.
Right. And I'm like,
looking at Growing up Hip Hop.
And you both still look good.
Well, thank you.
Like, you don't look sickly, you know?
(audience laughing) (Ja Rule laughing)
You know what I'm saying, Jeff?
It's a hard life out here.
You're not that old.
Old enough, old enough. Yeah, that's true.
Thank you for being here.
Thanks for having me, Wendy.
I'll see you around.
(audience cheering)
Everybody, check out Growing up Hip Hop New York.
It airs tonight on We TV.
♪ Feel, feel, feel it ♪
♪ Feel it ♪