It was how his bluster contorted into anguish, how his arm-wheeling freneticism made him seem 10 feet tall, how he packaged brazen attitude into radio-ready rap hits. It wasn’t just the bandana looped around his head, the manicured mustache, or the way he stretched his vowels and spit from the pit of his stomach. Now the comparison is ridiculous, an example of Ja’s boundless self-regard, but back then it didn’t seem completely implausible that Ja could one day have an impact akin to Pac. But in 2002, Ja tried with all his might to fashion himself as Pac’s rightful heir.
Because Ja Rule might seem like a relic of 2000s hip-hop whose career-ending beef with 50 Cent should probably be above the fold on his Wikipedia page, it’s easy to dismiss this bravado as posturing, a snarling burst of delusion from the co-founder of Fyre Festival.
