Get ready for a blast from the past: Murder Inc. Records. Label head Irv Gotti and once-star attraction Ja Rule stopped by New York City hip-hop station Hot 97 to talk with The Breakfast Club morning show and announced that they were bringing back the hip-hop imprint that made a huge sales dent during the early years of the 21st Century.
The appearance was especially notable for Rule, considering he just finished a two-year stint in prison. "Ja, you was coming home so many times...they said 20 days, 45 days...we tried to have a countdown but it didn't work," said DJ Envy. "It wasn't worse on nobody but me," the rapper responded with a smirk, and indicating that time in the joint isn't too bad when you know as many people as he does.
The conversation quickly turned to Murder Inc. and the aforementioned duo's role in bringing it back. The Queens-based hip-hop label saw its biggest success during the first few years of the millennium, with Rule releasing a trio of no. 1 albums between 2000-'02, and two no. 1 albums in 2002-'03 for R&B songstress Ashanti. Rule's last album, released during 2012, peaked at no. 197 on the Billboard 200, and Ashanti has since moved to her own Written label.
Gotti hinted during July that he was revitalizing his role in entertainment, announcing his new company Visionary. Murder Inc. will now function through Visionary. He also gave a preview of his new signee, a 14 year-old named Maddi Jane whom Gotti described as "the female Justin Bieber."
We'll have to see how that works out, but for now the plan is for Murder Inc. to serve as the hip-hop wing for Visionary, including new music from Rule as well as other talent the pair scouts.
No word on whether that includes trying to woo back Ashanti.
For now, Rule is pushing his own comeback with two singles, "Everything" and "Fresh Out Da Pen" (the latter referring to prison, not the writing utensil).
