YOUR FAVORITE MTV SHOWS ARE ON PARAMOUNT+

Ja Rule & Vin Diesel — Hollywood's Next Dynamic Duo?

Rapper's roles on big and small screens include parts in 'Fast and the Furious' and 'Pitch Black' sequels.

Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, and now Ja Rule and Vin Diesel?

Last week in Los Angeles on the set of his Murder Inc. compatriot Ashanti's "Foolish" video, the Queens rapper said he and Diesel are hoping to be Hollywood's next dynamic duo. They are committed to doing two more movies together, "The Fast and the Furious 2" and "Riddick."

"Obviously 'Fast and the Furious [2]' is going to pick up where we left off ," he said. "They're going to bulk up my character a bit. We're gonna get to see Edwin Bishop a little bit more this movie. And 'Riddick' is, ... it's not scary, but it's like a creature movie. It's like 'Pitch Black 2.' We're on another planet and it's crazy. These creatures come out only in the dark, and we can only see in the dark."

"Vin's my dog," he continued. "I shout him out on 'Smokin and Ridin' on my album [Pain Is Love]. He was in the studio with me that night when I recorded that. We were in there chillin'. I can't wait 'til we get going to Australia to shoot 'Riddick' and in Miami to shoot 'Fast and Furious 2.' "

Not too long ago, Ja returned from Germany, where he was working on "Half Past Dead" with Steven Seagal (see [article id="1450133"]"Ja Rule Teaming Up With Steven Seagal For Action Film"[/article]).

"I play Nick Frazier, a smooth criminal," he said. "We take these cars and we steal them from the U.S. and we ship them over to Russian diplomats. And that's basically my hustle when I'm on the streets. Then I go to jail in the process of that, and that's when everything starts to unfold. Steven, he's an undercover cop but I don't know it. I thought he was dead, [but then] he comes in. It's a great plot. Then it really gets deep."

Segueing back to the small screen, Ja also just finished a cameo in Mary J. Blige's new video "Rainy Dayz."

"Water, a lot of water," he said of the shoot. "It's just rain. It's a waterfall, it's tunnels of water, it's puddles of water. It's water. A lot of water."

Ja not only sings on the track, but he wrote the song after last year's terrorist attacks.

"I saw the tragedy and everything on September 11," he said. "I don't know, I was just in my basement, in my studio, listening to some tracks. And it just came to me. I guess that was just kind of like the feeling I had at the moment. Watching all the news all day. And it just came out like that."

For Ashanti's clip, he got to stay dry. Playing a gangster, he had to keep his cool.

"A woman that's in love with a man, she knows it's hurting to be with him, but she keeps on running back to him," he said of the video's concept. "It's kind of like that story of the 'Goodfellas,' Henry Hill and Janice Rossi with the other woman and stuff like that. We just kind of took it back to that."

For a look at Ja Rule's golden touch, tune in to this week's edition of "Chart Attack" Friday at 5 p.m.

Latest News