Ja Rule, born Jeffrey Atkins in 1976, grew up in the neighborhood of Hollis in Queens, New York City.
Source: Biography
... and burst into the mainstream in 1998 as a featured performer on the Jay-Z single "Can I Get A..."
Source: Biography
In 2000 and 2001, he released back-to-back No. 1-selling albums: "Rule 3:36" and "Pain Is Love." They sold a combined 10 million albums and were both certified triple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.
Source: RIAA
His most popular single was a remix of Jennifer Lopez's "I'm Real," which topped the charts for five weeks in the fall of 2001.
Source: Billboard
His next album, 2002's "The Last Temptation," was also a commercial success, going platinum and yielding the hit single "Mesmerize." The song was a hit, although it did make Blender's list of the 50 worst songs of all time.
In late 2002, the same week "The Last Temptation" dropped, Ja Rule tried his hand at acting, costarring with Steven Seagal in the action film "Half Past Dead." The film was a failure commercially and critically, earning just $19 million against a budget of $25 million and holding a paltry 3% favorability rating on Rotten Tomatoes. In 2002, he was also named GQ's Man of the Year in the solo musician category.
Source: Box Office Mojo, GQ
Ja Rule has had multiple run-ins with the law. In 2007, police in New York City found a loaded semi-automatic handgun with the serial number scratched off hidden in the rapper's car. He was later sentenced to two and a half years in prison after he pleaded guilty to attempted criminal possession of a weapon.
Source: CNN
In 2011, while Ja Rule was in prison, he received an additional 28-month sentence for tax evasion after admitting in federal court he hadn't filed taxes for fives years between 2004 and 2008. He agreed to pay back $1.1 million in tax debt as well as penalties to the IRS.
Ja Rule was released from prison in May 2013. Five months later, he played a drug dealer-turned-devout Christian in the film "I'm In Love with a Church Girl," which featured what Complex called "the most unintentionally hilarious movie scene of 2013."
Source: Complex
His other film credits include roles in "The Fast and The Furious" (2001), "Scary Movie 3" (2003), and "Assault on Precinct 13" (2005).
Source: IMDB
He earned $15,000 for his bit role in "The Fast and the Furious," but turned down $500,000 for a larger role in its sequel, "2 Fast 2 Furious," according to the sequel's director John Singelton.
Source: Grantland
Throughout his career, Ja Rule has maintained a longstanding feud against fellow rapper 50 Cent. Their feud took a turn in October 2018 when 50 Cent claimed he bought 200 front-row tickets to an upcoming Ja Rule concert just to keep them empty. The show was ultimately canceled.
Source: CBS News
Ja Rule met Billy McFarland, the convicted fraudster behind Fyre Festival, in 2015 through McFarland's company Magnises, which billed itself as a black card for millennials. The rapper helped promote Magnises, which was eventually revealed to be a scam.
Ja Rule cofounded the media-booking company Fyre Media with McFarland in 2016. McFarland soon began drawing up plans for a 2017 music festival, the ill-fated Fyre Festival, to promote the Fyre app.
Source: Bloomberg
Ja Rule and McFarland advertised Fyre Festival as an upscale music festival on a private island in the Bahamas, complete with luxury beach villas, gourmet food, and Instagram models and influencers.
Source: Business Insider
The experience customers received was the polar opposite, as guests arrived to a scene not remotely close to the promotional images they had seen. The event was abruptly canceled after guests had already arrived.
Source: Business Insider
As millions of people watched the disaster unfold online, Ja Rule was quick to distance himself from the fiasco, saying on Twitter, "I truly apologize as this is NOT MY FAULT."
After two documentaries about the festival were released in January 2019, Ja Rule denied liability for the event again, saying he too had been a victim of McFarland's scamming.
Source: BBC
McFarland was sentenced last year to six years in prison after pleading guilty to wire-fraud charges, and was forced to return $26 million that investors had pumped into the festival. Ja Rule emerged from the scandal relatively unscathed, although he and McFarland are facing multiple ongoing class-action lawsuits over the festival.
Source: Business Insider, Hollywood Reporter
This month, Ja Rule revealed his latest venture, a booking app called Iconn, which some critics say seems eerily similar to the original Fyre app the Fyre Festival was meant to promote.
Source: Complex
For Bookings!!! https://t.co/oys1rbvmHC pic.twitter.com/mZ3MqnNqPB
— Ja Rule (@Ruleyork) February 4, 2019And on Thursday, Ja Rule announced his idea of creating another music festival, simply saying, "in the midst of chaos, there's opportunity."
Source: Business Insider