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Page 1
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How did the feud start? Ja says ask 50 Cent, but don't believe the 'false story' ...
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Page 2
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Ja overcomes the loss of his sister, schoolyard fights and religious family division ...
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Page 3
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50 Cent and Ja Rule come to blows in Atlanta and later in New York ...
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Page 4
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Ja says he'd be willing to sit down and talk things out with his rival ...
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"The Wrap" Takes A Look At 50 Cent Vs. Ja Rule
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Ja Rule Comes Back Bigger With Two-For-One Video
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Ja Rule Takes His Beef With 50 Cent All The Way To South Africa
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DJ Tells 50 Cent, Ja Rule: One More Dis Record, Then Quit It
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Ja, Em And 50 Are Hot On Radio, But Should Their Disses Be?
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Ja Rule Calls 50 'Loose Change,' Disses 'Feminem' And Dr. Dre
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Farrakhan: I
really appreciate you and how God has used you to affect so many
millions of our young people. Tell me something about your growing up.
I heard you were an only child. Dad wasn't in the house, so you were
raised totally by your mom.
Ja Rule: Thank you. Yeah.
Farrakhan: Tell me about your mom. Tell me about your young life.
Ja Rule: Well, I had a kind of hard childhood. It's crazy
because not a lot of people are going to understand it. I grew up a
Jehovah's Witness.
Farrakhan: Ah, that's wonderful.
Ja Rule: So, yeah, we gonna get into it, how I didn't have
Christmas, I didn't have birthdays — none of the type of thing
kids enjoy. I missed all of that. My father wasn't around. He was a
womanizer and hit my mom. Mom, I am putting this out there. That's why
I vow to never hit a woman. I see the pain it brought my mom.
Farrakhan: And now you're married, have children and you never
hit your wife?
Ja Rule: Yes, three children — never hit my wife.
Farrakhan: That's wonderful, my brother.
Ja Rule: You know, I grew up an only child. I had a younger
sister, but she died when I was 5.
Farrakhan: What did she die from?
Ja Rule: Respiratory problems. She couldn't breathe properly.
Farrakhan: How did that affect you?
Ja Rule: See, that's the thing. It didn't really affect me until
I was older because I didn't understand it. I was young, 4 or 5,
and my mom comes home and she's like, "Your sister isn't gonna make
it." I didn't really understand it. I'm like, where's the next toy? It
didn't register until I was older and I was like, I don't have the
sister I could have grown up with. That was tough on me.
My father wasn't there so it was just me and my mom. She worked two
jobs trying to raise me, which was tough. She worked the four-to-twelve
shift, so no one was home when I came home from school. That's why I
feel like the streets raised me, 'cause I grew up with the older guys
around me.
Farrakhan: How did you relate to your classmates and teachers?
You grew up in Queens. Was it an all-black school?
Ja Rule: The first school I went to was all-black, PS 134. I
used to fight every day, so my mom figured I should be bused out
— you know the busing thing in Boston? So they bused me on out to
a white school, MS 172, where it was a little bit better. I didn't have
any black friends there, but I learned how to deal with that situation
and get along.
Farrakhan: Did you fight a lot in your new school?
Ja Rule: I didn't fight a lot there because I was tougher. I was
the black kid, so they kinda looked at me as the tough kid. I was
small, but at the black school I got into fights every day
because I was small. But here I was small and the tough guy.
Farrakhan: Did you feel somewhat abandoned, Ja, because Dad
wasn't there and Mom had to work to support and raise you?
Ja Rule: A little bit. I always felt like a loner because I was
by myself a lot. My grandma and grandpa, Ed and Mama Cherry,
helped out tremendously. They did a lot for me as a youngster. But
here's where things got twisted: Being a Jehovah's Witness, it's a very
strict religion and they have something called "disfellowshipping" or
"disassociating" if you do something outside their beliefs. And they
have a lot of beliefs that are hard on kids, hard on human beings. You
can't hang with worldly people, people outside Jehovah's, and so my mom
got disassociated from it because she liked to go out with her
co-workers and have a drink or two. They found this out and
disfellowshipped my mom. This devastated her because the whole
congregation wouldn't talk to her. That's how they do it. It's like
they banish you. They won't talk to you, not even your family. So my
grandmother and grandfather, her parents and her brother, stopped
speaking to my mother. This really made me hate the religion. How can a
religion tear apart family?
I didn't get involved. Now I'm successful and she's still
disfellowshipped, but everyone comes around. You know, if it took my
success to put my family back together, so be it. I'm not one to be,
like, stay away. I love to see my family together. Family's what life
is about. So I'm happy that now my mother's brother gives her a call
every now and then. Everybody is so friendly, and I'm not gonna say
it's all because I am successful, but that has something to do with it.
Farrakhan: This is very revealing, brother, because we are all
products of that which God has put within us and the way the
environment helps to shape and mold us. This helps me to see the man
I've heard about, that I've read about and that I've listened to, a
powerful human being: Ja Rule.
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Photo: Nation of Islam/MTV News
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