Songs for songs, Fat Joe washes Ja obviously but not because of his own verses. He has great beats and great features and that's what makes his songs nice. Ja might be a singing rapper but his hits were his 100%. Even when Ashanti or Lil Mo comes out, he's the one driving the thing. When Remy Ma comes out, who checks for Joe lol ?
REVISIONIST HISTORY IN THE BOLDED.
lil mo was the driving force behind "put it on me". the original version without lil mo is like night & day.
theres a reason why that was the moment of the night and they had to peform the entire song. this verzus doesnt even happen if lil mo isnt added to the record, because otherwise, jarule's career doesnt take off like it did.
also vita got the biggest pop of the entire verzus, and her verse was better than ja's.
to say that jarule was the one driving the song is crazy. it his biggest record and he got outshined by both of the features.
I haven’t watched the whole battle yet, but the crowd didn’t react at all to any of the hard shyt Joe or Ja was playing. I turned it off when I saw Put it on me get the biggest reaction of the night
Clearly this was a crowd of commercial leaning, only listen to the radio, casual fans.
It’s unfortunate that they wield so much influence on how the battle was perceived. I personally thought Joe was dominating the early rounds.
well "put it on me" was the biggest song between the both of them, of course it was gonna get the biggest reaction.
what did you expect??
i had fat joe winning early in terms of song selection as well, until they played "put it on me". fat joe was never gonna win over that crowd, but whatever chance he mightve had - was gone once they played that chit. joey turned around and performed that puff song hard as f*ck. he got his chit off and it still didnt matter,
Causation is always difficult to prove with shyt like this, but the timing really lines up. Ja is still all over the radio on huge songs in 2002. Meanwhile 50 is ascending and dissing him on mixtapes all through 2002. Ja drops an album end of the year that underperforms the one that dropped at the end of 2001. 50 becomes the biggest rapper in the game early in 2003 and continues to diss Ja. End of 2003 Ja drops an album that doesn’t even go gold
jarule was on borrowed time. 50 just sped up the process. similar to what jay-z did with the jersey craze.
jarule had already peaked and on top of that, he was over-exposed. the writing was on the wall @ the '02 BET Awards where jarule performed 3 times. my homebwoy said right then & there that jarule was about to fall off. in addition to that, im on record saying that if a rapper dissed jarule hard, it would hurt his career because he doesnt have a core rap fanbase. neither of us had any clue 50 cent was about to go mainstream and take the beef with him. we didnt know it was gonna be such a nasty fall. but the fall was still inevitable.
50's disses werent even anything special. his interviews are what stung the most. he basically ran around saying what people already felt about jarule, but on a bigger soapbox and with the biggest machine behind him. jarule was already on the verge of going down slowly. last temptation wasnt gonna do numbers like the previous two albums regardless, but 50 had turned all the fickle casuals against jarule. for instance; someone brought up that episode where "the reign" video got rejected by the 106th & park audience. that chit actually wouldnt have happened if it wasnt for 50. the video prolly wouldnt have done that well on the countdown, but it wouldnt have gotten completely rejected into oblivion.
it depends on the crowd and fans. The reason that the LOX and Dispet worked with the lox taking it with their hard records is because the fan base there are into the gritty sh*t. That was the vibe of the night. If you pair a popular artist that had MAJOR HITS and resonated with the fan growing up, you're going to have that type of environment. It all depends on who you pair up. I can promise you that if you had Pusha T vs Jadakiss, it would be way different.
the lox really didnt take it with their hard records. thats just one of the narratives that they pushed.
they really won because of the features and crowd control.
even when camron called them out on it a few times and the crowd began to react to it, the lox hurried up and shifted the narrative before the crowd got out of hand.
thats one thing you can say about this battle. neither fat joe or jarule allowed the other to dictate anything.
pusha isnt on jadakiss' level.
