One thing about Ja Rule is that he’s never going to budge on his rapping skills. Even when he spent years being mercilessly trolled and battered in diss tracks by 50 Cent, he never thought less of himself. Naturally, when put up against arguably the greatest rapper of all time, Jay-Z, Ja still felt like he had the best verse. Public opinion be damned.
Recently, Ja spoke with Carmelo Anthony and Kazeem Famuyide for their 7PM in Brooklyn podcast. There, he staked his claim for the best verse on “Can I Get A…” alongside Hov and Amil. Ultimately, he argued that his style and flow outweighed Jay-Z’s wordplay.
“I think I got the best verse on it,” Ja Rule argues. “But you know there’s layers to it. You know what I’m saying? Like Hov is a wordsmith. He’s gonna put that shit and put it all in pocket for you. I’m more on the flow side of it, I’mma flow that muthaf***er out. That’s why you hear him kind of get that flow. Ain’t nobody flowing like me on the record. Flow is different.”
Ja Rule Thinks He Has a Better Verse Than Jay-Z
“That’s what caught people’s eye, like, ‘Who’s this n***a?’ Big voice n***a but he be in that pocket. That’s my thing,” Ja continues. “And I feel like that’s where the melodic s*** came from too, just me bending and stretching flows and doing different things with my flows. Don’t nobody do that better than me.”
“Can I Get A…” eventually went platinum, peaking at No. 19 on the Billboard Hot 100 and boosted by its appearance on the Rush Hour soundtrack. Obviously, this bolstered Jay-Z’s case as a certified hitmaker. However, what the song did for Ja Rule and his legitimacy is even greater. It came out right before his debut album Venni Vetti Vecci, which helped Ja sell 184k copies and debut at No. 3 on the Billboard 200.
Elsewhere in the conversation, Ja Rule further advocated for his skills as an MC. When discussing his beef with 50 Cent, he suggested fans shouldn’t need to take sides between them. Despite this, he still felt the need to stress that he’s a better rapper than this rival, too.
“At the end of the day, you’ve gotta kinda love both or you gotta kinda respect both. 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 shit like that, you know I have a very different take on it than everybody does. He has a take on it that was his take,” Ja Rule explains. “I feel like I was the better rapper. 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.”
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