Even though last night’s Verzuz battle at New York’s Madison Square Garden featured Ja Rule and Fat Joe, fans in the stream’s comments couldn’t stop bringing up 50 Cent. The Queens rapper had a highly public feud with Ja Rule throughout the 2000s as he rose to prominence and Ja declined in popularity — a decline he and his fans have always attributed to the beef, despite it likely being due more to the federal investigation into Ja’s label Murder Inc. and changing tastes in hip-hop overall.
However, the comments still irked Murder Inc. founder Irv Gotti, who exploded in the comments section. “All y’all talking about that 50 shit,” he railed. “All good. He got beat up stabbed up. Shot up. And sued us. That’s all I’m gonna say. Your hero ain’t what you think he is. Period. And facts.”
50 himself quickly caught wind of the commentary (does this guy have Google Alerts set for his rivals or what?) and popped up on Instagram to mock Gotti and Murder Inc. with a pair of posts crowing about his lopsided mid-2000s “victory.” “Wtf am i trending for, I said I ain’t doing whatever that shit is they doing,” he captioned the first. In its follow-up, he crowed, “I put they whole label out of business, f*ck with me if you want to. I would stay out of my way if i wasn’t me. LOL.” Naturally, both captions were filled with promotions for his various business ventures, including Branson Cognac and Bottle Rover, which is apparently an alcohol delivery service.
Later, on Atlanta radio’s Big Tigger Morning Show, Ja insisted that 50 would have been “nothing without that f*cking white boy,” obviously attributing his rival’s success to his association with Eminem, then one of the biggest names in hip-hop, and his attendant fanbase. Incidentally, most in either rappers’ camps and in hip-hop at large would rather have seen Ja go toe-to-toe with 50 on Verzuz, but 50 already put paid to that dream last year.
Ja can rest assured that, at least as far as Rap Twitter is concerned, he came out of last night’s competition the clear winner, decisively controlling the hits battle as Fat Joe spent far too many rounds emphasizing his “real hip-hop” clout and not enough playing his actual hits.