This news dates back to
November 2002. Once each month is over, you will be able to select to view
archived news. That way, all news on this page will be from the current
month. Feel free to email details of Ja Rule/ Murder Inc. news, quoting
your source.
Last
Temptation Beaten By Shania:
If
you're one of those
people who grouses that the holiday shopping season seems to come earlier each
year, don't bother looking at next week's Billboard albums chart, where a
flood of new releases led by country crossover diva Shania Twain storm
the chart and rake in some early Yuletide coin.
Twain's fourth album, Up!, sold more than 874,000 copies, easily surging
past the rest of the pack and into next week's #1 spot, according to sales
figures released by SoundScan on Wednesday (November 27).
In all, eight new releases
crack the top 20 next week. The pop comp Now That's What I Call Music! Vol.
11 featuring Nelly, No Doubt, Kylie Minogue, Aaliyah, Dixie Chicks and
others debuts in the runner-up slot, selling just under 316,000 copies.
Ja Rule boasts the week's next highest debut, landing at #4 with his The Last
Temptation, which moved more than 237,000 copies in its first week in
stores. Ja comes in right on the heels of Eminem and the "8 Mile"
soundtrack, which holds strong at #3 after selling an additional 281,000 copies.
A few rock veterans also
managed to bust into the top 10. Matchbox Twenty's third album, More Than You
Think You Are, sold more than 178,000 copies to debut at #6, while the debut
album from Audioslave (featuring ex-Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell and
former members of Rage Against the Machine) will debut at #7 with 162,000 copies
sold.
The surge of new blood pushes last week's #1, Jay-Z's The Blueprint 2: The
Gift and the Curse, down to #5 on next week's chart. Missy Elliott, a rising
Avril Lavigne and Justin Timberlake round out the top 10.
Toni Braxton, Mudvayne and
late Beatles guitarist George Harrison will also make the top 20 next week.
R&B songstress Braxton's More Than a Woman sold more than 97,000
copies in its first week in stores to debut at #13. Taking a much louder route,
Mudvayne will debut at #17 after selling just under 79,000 copies of The End
of All Things to Come. Harrison's posthumous solo offering, Brainwashed,
sold more than 74,000 copies to debut at #18.
Talib Kweli came thisclose to scoring a top-20 debut with his latest, but the
rapper's Quality sold 67,000 copies to come in at #21, missing the top 20
by less than 500 copies.
The week's other notable
debuts include Craig David's Slicker Than Your Average at #32, Erick
Sermon's React at #71, Cash Money Greatest Hits, Vol. 1 at #87,
Susan Tedeschi's Wait for Me at #90 and the "Friday After Next"
soundtrack at #114.
Ja
Rule And Ashanti To Star In Remakes:
Ja
Rule may have just dropped his fourth album, The Last Temptation, but the
gravel-voiced Hollis, Queens, native already has plans to continue his segue
from MC to Hollywood swinger.
"We just got the green light. We're remaking
'Sparkle.' Me, Ashanti ... and Irv Gotti is [making his] directorial debut in
Hollywood," Rule disclosed Tuesday after his appearance on "TRL."
"That's just been greenlit with Warner Bros. It's going to be a big, big
event for that movie."
In the original film, Irene Cara starred in the title role, playing one of three
females in an all-sibling R&B group trying to make it big. The trio's world
is turned upside down when they start to gain fame and the oldest of the girls,
simply known as Sister, battles with drugs.
Ashanti will reprise Cara's part as the lead
character and Rule says he'll tackle the role or Sparkle's beau Stix, which was
originally played by "Miami Vice" star Philip Michael Thomas. The Inc.
is also hoping to cast Beyonc้ Knowles as the embattled eldest sibling and P.
Diddy as her estranged love interest, Levi. Joel Schumacher, one of the writers
on the original flick, is slated to produce.
"Right now we're just going to finish up casting," Rule said,
estimating when 'Sparkle' would spark up production. "They're going to talk
budgeting and stuff like that and then it'll be a go. I say we probably won't be
up in production until about next year."
A spokesperson for Warner Bros. was unable to
confirm the project, declining comment until the Murder Inc. deal is finalized.
It's on a considerably smaller scale, but we'll get to see Ja and Ashanti remake
another timeless movie sooner than "Sparkle." The duo, who have a
playful brother/sister relationship offscreen, switch it up onscreen, acting as
boyfriend and girlfriend for "Mesmerize," the second video from The
Last Temptation.
"We want to take the concept real big,"
Ja said a few weeks ago in a New York studio, while finishing up work on the
album. "It's real crazy. We wanna do the John Travolta/ Oliva Newton-John
classic, 'Grease.' We wanna recreate that whole [scene] in the theme park with
the cute playing around and bumper cars. We'll start out the video with the
whole transition thing where she got on her slut outfit, she's smoking a
cigarette and coughing and her girls are there. She's like, 'Well, if he wants
me to be more street, that's what I gotta do.'
"And they cut to me and I'm in my sweater and my n---as are there, rolling
the dice or whatever and they're looking at me like, 'Yo, what the f---?' "
Ja continued. "I'm like 'I love her. If she wants me to be a little more
[preppy], this is what I gotta do.' I see her in the slut outfit and I rip off
my joint then I'm in all black and it's on and popping. It's gonna be hot."
The Inc.'s king and queen take their love song
formula to the next level with a word exchange on the record.
"That's what I felt was gonna make the record really special and
different," Rule explained. "I kind of flirted with it with 'I'm
Real,' but I didn't take it all the way to this extent. That's really never been
done quite like that in hip-hop, a real duet where I'm on the hook. On the third
verse, me and Ashanti are going in and out, hip-hop style; she's singing and I'm
rhyming.
" 'Mesmerize' is about your feelings towards a
young lady," he added. " 'Your lips, your smile, I love it when you
kiss me, baby.' It's describing everything about her that you love. Her eyes,
her hips, her thighs and you're mesmerized."
No
Beef!
You
wouldn't know it, but battle-rap kingpin Kurupt and action-movie svengali Steven
Seagal have a lot in common. They both love music, do a lot of their own movie
stunts and, if you try to get them away from the dinner table, you may have a
problem especially when they're indulging in Tony Roma's world-renowned
ribs.
"Uncle Steve, man, he
was cool with us," Kurupt said last week of his co-star in "Half Past
Dead." "He wasn't really tripping with us. There really wasn't no
problems, he was very respectful and did his part. He tried to help us out as
much as possible with ours. It was a great team we had." (Click
here for photos from "Half Past Dead")
In the movie, Kurupt plays the wise-cracking Alcatraz convict Twitch ("He's
just a little man and he just talks a gang of sh--, always starting
trouble," Snoop Dogg's former running mate said of his role), who teams
with Seagal and fellow inmate Ja Rule to fight a gang of terrorists led by
Morris Chestnut and former "Party Machine" host Nia Peeples. Offscreen,
Kurupt said Seagal introduced him to some new musical methods, while he schooled
the action hero on the latest hip-hop cuts.
"I had to put him up on
it from Ja's perspective all the way to mine," Kurupt laughed. "I had
to play him some of those dainty killer tunes and let him know what's really
going on in our world. But Uncle Steve is pretty hip, you dig. He's got songs
he's done himself. He sings the blues and he's actually very, very tight. He
redid 'Redemption Song' by Bob Marley with all the existing Marleys.
"What I picked up from him was learning how to play that acoustic
guitar," Kurupt continued. "The majority of our off-time, I'd just sit
back and Uncle Steve would just be playing the blues."
Even though Kurupt serves as
Tha Row's Senior Vice President, we may never see the label's boss, Suge Knight,
signing Seagal to a contract. However, don't be surprised if you hear a
collaboration between Kurupt and his newfound friend. "Oh, definitely,
we're going to do something together," he insisted. "We already did
something when we was in Berlin [shooting the movie]. I rented studio time when
I was out there and I took him in. It was a real low-key spot and he was loving
it."
Kurupt also formed a bond with Ja Rule while shooting the movie for four months
in Germany. The two laid to rest any animosity they had toward each other in
real life and only squabbled when the script called for it.
"This movie is what
brought us together to even get a chance to meet up with each other and finally
talk," Kurupt recalled. "This is the first time we actually met since
[I dissed him in the song] 'Calling Out Names.' We found out that there's
nothing that we really dislike about each other. We became real cool
friends."
And with mad cow disease lurking, who really wants beef?
"They got the best Tony
Roma's cracking [in Germany]," Kurupt remembered. "Oh man, the ribs is
the key to the game because you can't really eat different sh-- out there. They
got that mad cow disease that's out all overseas. That's a problem with the
beef. So I'm a pork lover. The ribs is cracking and their barbecue chicken and
hot wings. We was eating Tony Roma's every day."
The L.A.-by-way-of-Philadelphia native needed to eat to gain strength for the
stunts he had to perform in the film.
"I shoot a
bazooka," he said of his toughest onscreen endeavor. "I ain't playing.
It knocked me 15 feet in the f---ing air but I shot that muthaf---a. Boosh! I do
my own stunts too, I do the Burt Reynolds man, you know. I was kind of nervous
at first, especially when I had to shoot the bazooka. I flew back into the
glass, it was some fake glass but it was real glass too. I didn't know where I
was going to land, how I was going to land. I've never done that before. It was
kind of a shocker."
