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A little over a week later, Tweet isn't the only one who's copped a copy of Ashanti. Over 502,000 others hit the store, giving Ashanti the biggest first-week sales of a debuting female R&B artist in the SoundScan era and a #1 spot on the Billboard 200.
"If you ask anybody that knows me, I'm a dreamer," Ashanti's Murder Inc. CEO, Irv Gotti, says an hour after he found out her numbers. "I always say we can go beyond our expectations, but she went beyond my expectations. It's never happened to me, where I thought we could do something and it went beyond my expectations."
"Oh my gosh, I feel so crazy right now," Ashanti chimes in. "Just in the air. It's overwhelming. I feel blessed, definitely. The pressure is gonna be ridiculous, but Murder Inc., we're gonna pull through. Definitely."
She's not selling wolf tickets either. Ashanti is living up to Ja's bold proclamation that she is the Princess of Hip-Hop Soul. The song she co-wrote and sings background on, Jennifer Lopez's remix to "Ain't It Funny," reigns supreme at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song she sings the chorus on, Fat Joe's "What's Luv?," is holding court in the second position and her own ditty, "Foolish," rounds out the top three. Ashanti also reached el numero uno earlier this year courtesy of a guest spot on Ja Rule's "Always on Time," which is still in the top 20.
"First and foremost, I owe it to God," Ashanti says of her ascension.
"I don't think she's changed yet," Ja Rule says. "Everything is pretty much hitting her. She's getting into a new world. The success and stardom is really starting to hit her. Ask me [again] in six months."
"I'm kind of overwhelmed," Ashanti explains, "because never in a million years did I expect it to happen [this way]. The [album's] set up, Irv, the whole Murder Inc. ... it couldn't be better. I'm so thankful. I'm still trying to grasp it. 'OK, it's really happening, that is my name in there.' It's just on and poppin' right now."
Her mother and co-manager, Tina Y. Douglas, agrees. "Until she met up with Irv Gotti and signed with Murder Inc., things didn't really start popping for her. She deserves all of it, because she worked really hard and she sacrificed a lot. Our family sacrificed a lot. She has paid her dues, and she is a seasoned artist, to be honest. Whoever's out there thinking that this happened over a couple of months or since the Pun record [Big Pun's "How We Roll," which Ashanti sang on] came out is totally uninformed. I'm here to let them know it's been a long, tough struggle."
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Photo: Murder Inc.
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