Ja wants to tell the story behind the song, but he has to shout to be heard over the video game bleeps and punchy synthesizers arranged by his label's CEO and the track's producer, Irv Gotti.

"This beat was supposed to be for Brandy," the 25-year-old says with a sly smile before disclosing the obvious — that he kept it for himself. The song, "Lost Little Girl," is a last-minute addition to his new album, Pain Is Love.

Instead of sprinkles of the braided R&B star's spry harmonies, the beat is now saturated with Ja's cries of angst and fervently spilled storytelling about a fast-living girl who's destined for misery. It's a testament to Ja's newly minted status as a hit-writer-for-hire that he can take a song intended for a mainstream singer and turn it into a thug anthem that is undeniably his.

Unlike rappers who carry around notebooks filled with rhymes and ideas, Ja flows from somewhere more spontaneous. Most of the hooks to his biggest hits sprung out of him spontaneously, jumping up from his throat as if delivered by a force he can't control.

"It's how I came up with 'Between Me and You,'" he says of one of his biggest hits. "I came up with the hook in seconds, because sometimes when I listen to tracks I can hear the words. I feel like I can hear the words coming out of the tracks sometimes."

Just three albums in, he's also mastered the art of slipping easily between hardcore and sensitive gangsta. As if to prove it, he plays a posse cut called "The Inc.," on which he rhymes about getting his thug on.

"These types of records are easy, street records," says Ja. The Hollis, Queens, native was born and bred on rapping in the mean streets. Before he got a record deal, Ja used to feed on fellow street-corner MCs in rhyme battles alongside another then-rookie, DMX. But unlike Dark Man, Ja hasn't found his greatest success by keeping one foot in the gutter. It's his universally loved hip-hop/R&B hybrids that have allowed him to shine the brightest.

"Sometimes I'll be thinking about it and I'll be like, 'Man, I don't want muthaf---ers to think that I can't spit,' " he says. "I don't want them to forget who I am. That's what I used to do; I used to battle. A lot of MCs that are out right now, we used to give it to them. [We would] come to their video shoots [and] just go at it hard."

But crooners, pop princesses and headbangers are the ones who Ja has been going at it hard with lately. He says he wrote a song for Brandy's album that she's ecstatic about, and acts such as TLC, Metallica, Macy Gray and Enrique Iglesias have been hitting him on his two-way, hoping he can do the same for them as he did for J. Lo. No Doubt's been calling too, and J. Lo wouldn't mind another track while he's at it.

Not bad for someone whom some wrote off as a one-hit wonder and Tupac wannabe based on his first album, 1999's Venni Vetti Vecci.

"I'm established now, and people respect what I do as an artist now versus just [making] a hot record," Ja says. "Now I'm coming with Pain Is Love. [It shows the] transition I've been through. I've gone through all the pain and the suffering, and I'm receiving some love on this one."

"He's found his zone," Def Jam President Kevin Liles says. "Now he's got n----s saying, 'That's a Ja Rule record.' I'm not surprised. He's worked tremendously to make sure he defines himself as being more than just a guy who raps. He is becoming his own business, and people want to be in the Ja Rule business."

"That's the main thing I want people to grasp from me," says Ja, co-star of such films as last summer's "The Fast and the Furious" and the upcoming "Crime Partners." "I want them to look at me and say, 'Yo, he is a rapper and he comes from the rap world, but he can do so many other things. I think it's in us to do these things, but a lot of artists are scared to explore their musical talents.

"I don't think all of them grasp the real true essence of music," he continues. "It's really something spiritual. It's universal. It's driven by passion and feeling. I wanna do some things with this album. I wanna break some barriers."

As those barriers come down, Ja's not finding that it's more money, more problems. Just the opposite, in fact. The more success he has and the more respect he gains, the easier it is to do his thing.

"I didn't feel like I even made my album," Ja says. "I was done before I knew it."

Unlike his previous LP, last year's Rule 3:36, recorded as he chilled in Beverly Hills for months with his Murder Inc. brethren, this time Ja was hard at work while touring, trying to put together his second album in just under a year.