ASHANTI SPEAKS ON IRV & JA RULE

Posted by J'More

The former princess of R&B, Ashanti, admits she was once naive, but now she’s all grown up and looking at life in a different way. In this months issue of Sister2Sister mag, Ashanti shares the cover with the two most important women in her life…her mom Tina and lil’ sis Kenashia. She not only declares her independence, but she also defines her one-time mentor Irv Gotti as being “very emotional” and questions why Ja Rule didn’t holla at her before he put her on blast in the diss track “Judas.
Ashanti addresses the rumors that she dropped Irv while Murder Inc. dealt with the FBI investigation.

“You know what? It’s just really weird because it was a very bad time. It was a very upsetting time for everyone—all the artists signed to Murder Inc. And going through the trial was tough on everyone’s personal life, on everyone’s career. You know, and it’s very—you saw me at the trial— Yeah, I was there. Ja [Rule] was there, Lloyd was there; everyone was there. I’ve said this numerous times: Sometimes, Irv—he gets very emotional. Sometimes it’s a good thing and sometimes it’s not a good thing. In this business there’s really no room for emotion because it can mess a lot of things up.”

Ashanti on her relationship with Ja Rule and the diss song “Judas”:

“Let me tell you something. An emotional man is way worse than an emotional woman. You know, I spoke to Ja about the record. And again, it was that emotional thing. Ja was upset about a couple of things, about a year or two ago, and we spoke after it. But my thing is, we’re adults. You got my numbers, I got your numbers. If there’s a problem just holla at me. You know, it’s very simple.”

Now, don’t get it twisted. They’re still cool even though he’s not on her upcoming album The Declaration. She says,

“It’s so expected for me and Ja to do a record, so we both kind of took control of our projects and wanted to do something very different this time. It doesn’t mean that we’re never going to do another record together. ‘Cause you know we have an amazing chemistry”.

Even when sh*t gets rough, Ashanti still keeps on her “game face”.

“The music industry changes so abruptly. So within four years a lot has happened. Obviously, you know, my record label, my personal life—I’ve done a lot of growing up. And just like the music changes, people change. And when you grow up you’re going to learn different things about yourself. Yeah, you’ve got to keep your game face on at all times; it doesn’t matter how bad something has hurt you. It’s crazy because at the end of the day we’re all regular people; we hurt just like everyone else.”