Jennifer Lopez, featuring Ja Rule and Caddillac Tah
Song: "Ain't It Funny (Murder Remix)"
Director: Cris Judd
Album: J to tha L-O!: The Remixes (Epic, 2002)

Mary J. Blige, featuring Ja Rule
Song: "Rainy Dayz"
Director: David Palmer
Album: No More Drama (MCA, 2002) by Cynthia Fuchs
PopMatters Film & TV Editor

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Let it rain on me

Ha, ha, it must be the eyes
That got me like, damn.
If they get any fatter,
Man, the Rule
Gonna hafta get at her,
And our situation won't matter.
I come to make you smile.
— Ja Rule, in Jennifer Lopez's "Ain't It Funny (Murder Remix)

All of those rainy days,
Spend ya lifetime tryin' to wash away,
Until the sun shines and I see your face.
Smile at me, smile at me.
— Ja Rule, in Mary J. Blige's "Rainy Dayz"

These days, Ja Rule is all about smiling. Much as he wants to make you smile, you know he must be smiling some himself, smiling, as they say, all the way to the bank. Currently the go-to-ingest guy for superstar duets, he's got Top Ten singles with Jennifer Lopez, Mary J. Blige, and Ashanti, all at the same time. It's not like this is a big surprise. Ja Rule made his name with hiphoppy love duets, helping big-voiced singers like Lil Mo and Vita make their way inside the business. Thank you Ja Rule, for opening so many doors for others, just like Jay-Z opened one for you back on "Can I Get A...," in which Ja made good on one of the more salient "featured artist" spots of all time: "It ain't even a question / How my dough flows, I'm good to these bad hos / Like my bush wet and undry, like damp clothes."

True, he's got a mouth on him. Yes, he tends to have a lot of bikinied girls in his videos (and sometimes a lot of white ones, as in "Livin' It Up"), but Ja acts like he knows what he's doing. As he tells MTV in a 2001 interview, "I make records that will degrade women sometimes, but it's all in fun, and the ladies understand that. 'Put It on Me' is something for them. All the shit I talk about them, at least I can give them one back." (For the record, "Put It On Me" bemoans being separated from your family -- for example, Ja's wife Aisha -- and feeling homesick.) And so, okay, he reminds some people too much of Tupac and/or DMX, and certainly, he spends much time working on his fabulous physique.

For all the (admittedly minor) flack he's caught, the 26-year-old Hollis, Queens native is also doing fine, thanks. He has some idea of the cost of stardom; he's been working it out in his head for years. As he tells Vibe (January 2002), "Anything I did, I thought I was going to be the best. When I was boxing, I thought I was going to be the next middleweight champion of the world." Now that the former Jeffrey Atkins is actually turning into the multi-threat celebrity he dreamed of being, he's working hard at it. By all accounts, he's more than ready to parlay his dramatic flair in music videos (dig that crazy, camera-over-the-graveyard scene in "I Cry"), into big screen pizzazz: he stole the show from Pras in the lamentable Turn It Up, raced cars for a minute in last year's The Fast and the Furious, and for a few more in the upcoming Half Past Dead, with Steven Seagal, whose previous film with a Def Jam artist (DMX, in Exit Wounds) just about revived his mostly-dead career.

For all Ja's self-love (or more likely, because of it), he's reached the enviable place where he's at now by being quite adorably adaptable and pleasurably passionate. Traversing hiphop, r&b, and pop with seeming ease, he collaborates with and writes songs for everyone from Metallica and Enrique Iglesias to Brandy and Charli Baltimore (he even co-wrote "If We" for Mariah Carey's Glitter, something everyone might rather forget). Nowadays, everyone wants him on the "featured" artist tip. Shoot, it's almost ironic (at least in the way Alanis uses the word) that Ja Rule was Vibe's "Solo Artist of the Year," the year that Pain Is Love reinvented the sensitive gangsta. He's that good at being "featured."

And yet, all this hubbub doesn't explain the remix business. Appropriately, perhaps, all this re-stuff is mundane and widespread. Everyone's doing it. And if it's not alarming as a business practice, it's still shady, closing out the possibility that new artists might get their material out in public, what with all the airwaves and shelf space taken up by stuff that's old already. Last summer, J. Lo resold J. Lo with one added track. More recently, Mary J. Blige, never one to let lesser mortals outmaneuver her, got on that bandwagon and re-released, with a few tracks added and one or two gone, her No More Drama. One more one-upping: the evidently critic-proof J to tha L-O!: The Remixes entered the charts at number one, and last Tuesday, day after the sixth month anniversary of 9-11, Destiny's Child released their remix album, so elegantly titled, The Remixes. Honestly, has anyone been holding his breath waiting for "Wyclef Jean's Extended Version" of "No, No, No Part 2"?

Though remixes have long been popular and profitable (see: dance mixes and aerobics classes), this particular Moment (as in, it too shall pass) appears to have been jumpstarted last year when Ja appeared with J. Lo on "I'm Real (Murder Remix)" (so named because Murder, Inc.'s Irv Gotti produced it). She played real, he played gruff balladeer, and together, they became the collabo made in heaven. The video is especially coy, what with the couple first nuzzling on a neighborhood b-ball court -- she in pink shorts set and he in designer hood gear -- then breaking into "spontaneous" laughter at video's end, only makes them more appealing: they get the joke, so perfectly "real" are they.

Add to this fundamental allure the PR bonanza that accompanied Lopez's use of the n-word on the track (and her possibly disingenuous insistence that she didn't understand the problem) and the knock-out live performance at the 2001 MTV Music Video Awards -- and the duet turned into the most lucrative bit of product to come down the marketing pike in years. (Ja Rule, for his part, defends J. Lo's use of the term: "She's not the first Latino to use that word on a record, and it's never been an issue before. I think it's just that she's a very high-profile star and it's something to let people get a chance to poke at her" [MTV.com, 3 Aug 2001].)

Since "I'm Real" worked out so well for them, J and Ja are back together again on the "Ain't It Funny" remix. This one is all about getting over a broken relationship, by being self-righteous and successful (and married, to the choreographer-turned-video-director, Cris Judd). Mostly, it's about payback. Lopez is feeling confident these days, and she makes no bones about it, reminding you, in case you've had the temerity to forget, that for her, "love don't cost a thing." Even better, it can turn a profit.

The ostensible backstory for "Ain't It Funny" reads like a soap opera, one in which the concept of remix -- funnily enough -- is key. Surely, it's not surprising that J and Ja, along with Irv Gotti, have (re)discovered the extraordinary commercial effects of the remix. After all, her very own legendary ex, P. Diddy Combs, stoked his early career with equal amounts of fuel from Biggie and recycled "hits from the '80s," all the while making himself a record label, more than a few enemies, and oh yes, scads of money. Indeed, the "Ain't It Funny" remix comes with loads of P-baggage, not least because it alludes so plainly to Lopez's spectacularly public breakup with Combs: "Now you're lookin' / Like a lonely man. / I remember how you / Did me wrong. / And now you're hurtin' / 'Cause my love is gone. / Everybody gets / A chance to burn. / You can take it / As a lesson learned." Youch.

Apparently, the urge to the remix overcomes all. The track samples P's "Flava in Ya Ear," one of his finer tracks, made with Craig Mack back in the glorious Biggie days, helping out the very girl who broke his heart. Not incidentally, he also produced a track on the decidedly un-new J to tha L-O!: The Remixes, and just now has his own not-so-clever retort of a video rotating, "I Need a Girl (To Bella)," wishing out loud, with help from Usher, damn, that she woulda had his baby. While P. Diddy's involvement certainly adds to the project's voyeuristic appeal, it also exacerbates the whole retread aspect. In "Ain't It Funny," J and P have found the ideal project to remix and recycle: they can rehearse their romance, their breakup, and their ongoing reconciliation, in a most excellent fashion -- sophisticated, smooth, and satisfying, and most importantly, in public. Ja Rule's appearance only makes it sweeter, with J in need of re-establishing her street cred (with her Fly Girl days long behind her), and P in need of some performative victimization, so as to rehabilitate his career following the Shone conviction.

In the video for "Ain't It Funny," Ja Rule (or "Juh-rool," as Melissa Rivers kept calling him during the Grammys fashion breakdown she did with her mom), plays a small but illuminating role. He introduces the scene, delineating Lopez's newly assigned status as force of nature: "Hello, no I'm not be / Harmin' y'alls wall. / I'm the Rule in the shot call. / Off the wall, / Like MJ in his early days. / It's the achin' Lopez now." Cleverly phrased comparison to Michael aside, the lyrics are explicitly geared to generate appropriate awe of tha L-O. Tha achin' L-O.

The video proper begins with the sound of a doorbell and a blank, dark screen that turns out to the door that Lopez Herself opens. She is, of course, radiant, her hair newly banged and super-silky, tinted orange to match the blondish apartment décor, as well as the many colorful costumes she dons during the vid. When she sees the camera/you, she looks consternated for a second, that is, less than happy to see you. At first, you might wonder why, and then you realize -- you're Puffy, come knocking on her door again. If you could have been anyone else, you know you woulda been.

Turns out that J's got a party going on, attended by Ja Rule, Ashanti, Caddillac Tah, all hanging out, making use of her swank in-house sound booth. Your arrival is a definite downer, you being the "lonely man" with his "chance to burn." This set up is cleverly managed, courtesy of Mr. Lopez's directing: the interloper/visitor/guy's body is visible occasionally, trying to duck out the frame, but the face remains obscured. At the same time, the body most devastatingly on display is hers, with convenient wind machines blowing her gauzy top and flowing hair. "Now ya wanna see / What's goin' down," she sings, "Tryin' to tell me / Why ya want my time, / Tryin' to tell me / How I'm on your mind." In other words, she's not buying it.

Just why the ex has come to visit is not entirely clear, though it could be that he's looking for action at the party, indicated when he/the camera looks at her, then looks at another girl across the room, then looks back to see La Lopez rolling her eyes: "Hope you realize / That now I'm through / And I don't ever wanna / Hear from you." That tears it. She shows him/the camera/you the door. Once you're outside, the camera cuts back inside, where J. Lo karate-kicks at where you've just been, quite pleased to see you gone. Cold. But funny, too. And to underline just how funny she can be, Lopez spends the last seconds of the video teamed up with Ja Rule, coming together on nearly lilting vocals: "Baby, is that your girlfriend? / I got my boyfriend. / But maybe / We can be friends. / La, da, da, da, da, da." Mmm-hmmmm.

Where Lopez's charm and playfulness here barely mask the melodrama, queen of hiphop-soul Mary J. Blige has a very different drive, toward the end of drama. Her work with Ja Rule on "Rainy Dayz" is what you might call passionate pop. And it's not strictly a remix -- it's a song that Ja wrote for her, and it isn't on the first No More Drama (released in 2001), only on this second one, the so-called "remix" version of No More Drama (2002), the one with the pink-sunglasses-and-pink-alligator-jacket cover art, as opposed to the first incarnation of the album, where she's wearing yellow fur and dramatic eye makeup. Actually, the 2002 No More Drama isn't even a remix album, though it does include a couple of remixes. In fact (and while fully conceding that Mary is a goddess), the album seems something of a scam, a way to get fans to buy more product, when there isn't much that's new on it. (That said, I surely ran out and bought it as soon as it dropped.)

The video for "Rainy Dayz" repeats this concept, appropriately enough. As suggested by the title, the visuals are very wet, but not in that young-sexy-thing way that kids like Britney play at. Mary and Ja Rule stand in the rain and declare themselves. That is, rain is here a metaphor for travails, natural and cultural, that can be overcome. This "rain" can even help to define and deepen a relationship, rather than as come-hither plot or even relationship-ending dirge. The rain here is fashionably cascading, sparkling, and astounding, a special effect that leads to appreciation. The duet takes the shape of a call and response:

[Mary] Nobody loves the rain.
[Ja] Can't stand it.
We know we've seen it before.
[Mary] Baby, handle it.
Baby, what did we tell ya before,
About chasin' those waterfalls?
[Both] Yeah...

True, Ja Rule does have a keen, maybe even enlarged, sense of himself as messenger and celebrity. But he also knows a most effective route to triumph and transcendence. It's a surefire formula: vulnerability mixed with ego. Pain is love, baby.