Songoftheday 3/15/23 - It's been a while since you came around, now you want to see what's going down...

 

 

"Ain't It Funny" - Jennifer Lopez featuring Ja Rule

from the albums J. Lo (original version, 2001) and J to the L--O! The Remixes ("Murder Remix", 2002)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (six weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 23

Today's song comes from dancer/singer/actress Jennifer Lopez, whose sophomore album J. Lo had scored a pair of hits in 2001 with "Love Don't Cost A Thing" and "Play" before her team completely reworked the track "I'm Real" with rapper Ja Rule. "I'm Real", in which the "Murder Remix" on the most part only shared its title with the original version, ended up topping Billboard magazine's Hot 100 pop chart, and restarted her career. Capitalizing on this, Lopez went back to Ja Rule to redo another cut from the album, "Ain't It Funny". The original, written by Lopez with producer Cory Rooney, was a breezy Latin pop song that fit with the work she, Enrique Iglesias, and Ricky Martin had done already. A music video was shot for the song by Herb Ritts (famous on MTV for filming Madonna's "Cherish" and Janet Jackson's "Love Will Never Do" videos). The production works well for her voice, and personally, I like this version better...

Despite this version doing very well worldwide when it was released in the summer of 2001, going top ten in Hungary (#2), the United Kingdom (#3), Sweden (#3), the Netherlands (#3), Romania (#3), Belgium (#5 Wallonia/#8 Flanders), Greece (#5), Norway (#9), Switzerland (#9), Ireland (#9), and Spain (#10), and made the top-40 in Germany (#13), France (#13), Austria (#16), Italy (#17), Denmark (#16), Australia (#25), and New Zealand (#31), it didn't catch fire in the U.S., perhaps because the "Latin Explosion", already a couple years old, had been fading from the pop radio scene. 

That collaboration not only resparked interest in J. Lo's album, but rocketed Ja Rule's profile, as his own album Pain Is Love scored a #1 hit not much unlike "I'm Real", "Always On Time" with singer Ashanti, in February of 2002. So it also behooved him to work on another song of Lopez's, as her record company readied a special "remix" album J. To The L--O! which was released in the beginning of that year. For "Ain't It Funny", there's no part of either song that correlates except the title, but with Columbia Records working Billboard magazine's rules at the time allowed both versions to be charting as a single entry, since it had the "remix" tag. 

The "Murder Remix", named for Ja Rule's record company with Irv Gotti, was produced by Gotti with Marcus "7 Aurelius" Vest, and had rap breaks from both Rule and Cadillac Tah (Tiheem Crocker), an upcoming rapper who at that point had just had exposure as one of the features on Faith Evans' minor R&B hit "Good Life" (which also had Ja Rule), which went to #42 in 2001. He also had a single on the Murder Inc. label, "POV City Anthem", which peaked at #83 on Billboard's R&B chart in the spring of 2001 as well. However Cadillac Tah wasn't credited on the chart promotion of the track, possibly to clean up the easy pairing of the same people from "I'm Real". The Latin production was completely scrapped in favor of a looped sample of rapper Craig Mack's 1994 top ten pop hit "Flava In Ya Ear". Jennifer's verses, written by Ashanti as a favor to Gotti and Rule, were a biting retort to an ex who's still trying to flex his way back into her life. It was widely construed as a shot fire to Lopez exboyfriend Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, though unless Ashanti channeled her frustrations, this is second-hand ire. Rule and Tah act as "hype men" here, though they dominate the track and almost make J. Lo seem like the featured guest. Nevertheless, the new version of "Ain't It Funny" caught on (or was pushed on) like wildfire, and brought Jennifer and Ja Rule back to the top of the charts. A new bright and flashy music video featuring the three of them was shot, and MTV lapped it up as well...

"Ain't It Funny", in both its forms, topped Billboard's Hot 100 for six week starting in March of 2002, while climbing to #8 on their R&B Singles chart. On the radio (the mag never separated airplay of either version), the song spent three weeks at #1 on the Mainstream Top-40 chart, #2 on the R&B Airplay list, and topped the dance-oriented Rhythmic format for two weeks. The club remixes of the song (based on the original version), remixed by house music legend Steve "Silk" Hurley among others, helped the song rise to #8 on Billboard's Dance Club Play chart. Internationally, the "Murder Remix" made the top ten in the United Kingdom (#4), the Netherlands (#7), Switzerland (#7), and Australia (#9), and reached the top-40 in Canada (#12), Hungary (#14), Spain (#16), Belgium (#16 Flanders/#24 Wallonia), Germany (#18), Denmark (#19), and Greece (#22). 

 

Cadillac Tah would continue on Murder Inc. for awhile, releasing a string of singles including one, "I Got'cha Ma" with Althea, which hit #88 on the R&B chart. Tah would appear on the label's supergroup the Inc.'s album Irv Gotti Presents: The Inc. album, which went to #3 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and sold over a half million, but he would never have his own album.  The second single from that compilation, "The Pledge", featured Tah, and went to #65 on the R&B chart in 2002. He's released albums on his own more recently, the latest being Crimeboss Vol. 2 in 2022. 

As for Ja Rule and Jennifer Lopez, both will be back to the series, as will the J. To The L--O! album.

Original: (7/10)   Murder Remix (6/10)

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

 The club remix by Steve "Silk" Hurley made the top ten on the dance chart at the close of 2001...

 

Here's J. Lo performing the original version for the British show CD:UK in 2001...

And also she did the Latin version in her Let's Get Loud concert...

However, for her concert in New York in 2015, Lopez and Ja Rule did the Murder Remix....

 

 Up tomorrow: This diva is through with stressin'.