t's common knowledge to everyone that, more than any other rap artist, I hate Ja Rule. I think that, not only is he a terrible rapper, but he sold out to sell records. Instead of making hard, gangster rap, he now makes smooth R&B love songs. Let's get one thing straight, though. It wasn't as though it was good gangster rap that he was making. However, in comparison to his new style, it was the difference between Mozart and Salieri. So, imagine my delight when a certain special lady (who will remain nameless, even though she won't read this), gave me a package containing Ja Rule's new CD, because "I know you like rap music."


Besides that, Christmas was good to me. I got the new Nas CD (which is pretty damn awesome), the new Jay-Z Unplugged, and the Great Adventures of Slick Rick, a damn classic. And Ja Rule - Pain is Love. Maybe I'm biased, and I wouldn't be afraid to admit that this CD may look worse in comparison, I don't know. It doesn't change the fact that this is one of the worst albums I've heard, well, maybe ever.


The first thing I usually do when I get a CD is to look at the production credits. Irv Gotti, Ja Rule's in-house producer, produces almost every song on the CD. For the untrained, this means that not only does every song sound about the same due to Gotti's lack of depth, but they all sound about the same as Ja Rule's last "effort", Rule 3:36. Gotti wants us to think the songs are different, as there is a pretty good mix of gangster songs and blatant pop songs. He has a formula, though. Turn the bass high for a pop song, turn the bass low for a gangster song. In fact, I'm pretty sure that Gotti took the beats from Rule 3:36 and added a bass line to the pop songs, and eliminated the bass line from all of the gangster songs to make the beats for Pain is Love.


By now, everyone's heard the first two singles from Pain is Love, "I'm Real" and "Livin' It Up." Sure, they make girls shake their butts and teenyboppers love them, but I'm not here to review "club potential" or sales, I review music. Both of these songs feature wack beats and wack rhymes. Ja Rule is not really capable of bringing lyrical heat, and his collaborators on the songs, Case and Jennifer Lopez, aren't exactly someone I'd like to listen to on a hook. R. Kelly has sung the occasional good hook (see: F**k You Tonight, Fiesta), and there are TONS of singers 100,000 times better than J. Lo that come cheaper. For example, Vinia Mojica, Mary J Blige, Tekitha, I could go on for hours. But, they sell, so it makes sense that Rule picked them (or perhaps had them picked for him?). Unfortunately, they only detract from the song, as a whole. Both of the songs have beats that aren't great, but sound a lot worse with the singers and Rule flowing over them.


One thing Pain is Love doesn't have is lyrics. Oh, don't get me wrong, it has lyrics, but it doesn't have lyrics. Ja Rule brings us classics like: "M'uhfuckers y'all want problems, c'mon, I'm the nigga to give 'em/Niggaz don't want none of the Rule they know how hard I'm hittin/Why should I bother with 'em, when they ain't touchin what I'm doin?/I'm takin this rap game, to levels that's unhuman (c'mon niggaz)." Come on, indeed. Here's an exercise.. try to say this verse with a good flow. You can't do it, because unfortunately the lyrics don't portray Ja Rule's mentally retarded singing, or crooning. One thing I don't understand: He brings in R&B artists to sing his hooks, but he IS an R&B artist. If he's not, then he's a damn disgrace to hip-hop.


And then the guests. Not one strong rhyme from any of them. Black Child, Charli Baltimore, and Cadillac Tah from the Murderers show up, and none of them do a damn thing. Missy Elliot and Boo and Gotti also pop up with rhymes that aren't any good. 2Pac gets sampled on "So Much Pain", and it's hard to tell the different between Ja Rule and his hero 'Pac. The hooks are sung by Ashanti, Case, J.Lo, and Tweet, none of whom are actually good singers.


The album even blesses us with a pattern. It's real easy: Skip the intro and all of the skits. The first song is a gangsta song, the second song is a ballad, and they just go back and forth, back and forth. This effectively kills any flow that the album might have been able to garner. The album is up and down al the way through with the quality remaining low throughout the entire album.


I was planning to go through song-by-song and say how bad the album is, but there's no point. Don't buy this unless you like pain.. which means I guess you like Love, since Pain IS Love. Ugh.