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— by Shaheem Reid, with additional reporting by Sway Calloway and Yvonne Spillers
"It's almost like a family barbecue type thing when we get together," Irving Lorenzo's best friend Ja Rule said. "It's just footballs, cards and gambling, a lot of talking sh--. It's just a good time."
Fresh off his 31st birthday, Irv was in London at the In and Out Club for Ashanti's U.K. album-release party. The only passes being thrown were by guys and girls trying to get better acquainted, and there was enough champagne at the bar to fill a Jacuzzi. Irv was appreciative that hundreds — including special guests like Wyclef and Shaggy — came out to show love, but it wouldn't have been the same for him if Ja and the rest of his peeps weren't there. For the youngest in a family of eight children, kinfolk is still the most important thing to him.
As a teenager Irv was known as DJ Irv, a tag he shed long ago, and has since added the title of CEO and the last name of Gotti (Jay-Z, for whom Irv used to DJ, gave him the moniker around '95). Like John Gotti, the late Gambino crime-family boss, Irv is a product of the streets of New York who made his way to the top of his game: Lately such luminaries as Jennifer Lopez, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Toni Braxton and Michael Jackson have been hitting I.G. up on the three 2ways and two cell phones he keeps around his waist like a ghetto utility belt. He's got beats, and he's become the latest muse of hip-hop and R&B.
"He pulls certain things out of you to make you your best," Ashanti said of her Murder Inc. boss and co-producer of her double-platinum debut album. "He's like a genius when it comes to creativity, to music, concepts of videos and the business. He gets it done — by hook or by crook."
While it's only recently that Gotti seems to be headed toward CEO superstar status a la P. Diddy and Jermaine Dupri, he's been cultivating a penchant for hustling for close to 15 years.
"Irv was a street DJ," remembered Jaz-O, who took Gotti under his wing early on. "He was doing all the street [mixtape] stuff before DJ Clue and all of them. He was doing those little cassette tapes with beats and mixes, selling them to the hustlers throughout Queens. He had a big name for himself in Queens and was getting some paper, too."
"It was something for me to do with my life," Gotti recalled. "I went at it hard."
His affinity for the turntables eventually led to his love for making beats. While working in the studio with his friend and production luminary Chad "Dr. Seuss" Elliot on the track for "Born Loser" around 1989, he caught the attention of Ruff Ryder CEOs Dee and Waah, who wanted the beat for their artist DMX. They decided to take him into their camp along with a pre-teenage Jadakiss, an even younger Swizz Beatz, and X, who was buzzing in the streets with his ferocious brand of line-spitting.
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Photo: Murder Inc./Def Jam
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