Mariah Carey finds support
Irv Gotti, Ja Rule's executive producer, says he was called last year to sabotage Mariah Carey's Glitter album. Sony Music head Tommy Mottola allegedly called Gotti and asked him to produce a remix for Jennifer Lopez's "I'm Real" featuring Ja Rule that would scoop a collaboration Gotti and Ja Rule had in the works for Carey's Glitter album, Gotti told the hip-hop magazine XXL.
"I get a call from Tommy Mottola, who I have a great relationship with, and he's like, 'I need you to do me a favor. I want you to do this remix for Jennifer Lopez. I want you to put Ja on the record,'" Gotti told the magazine. "Immediately, I knew what he was doing because he just finished the Mariah record."
When Launch spoke to Ja Rule in August, he explained receiving the request to work with Lopez. "I got a call from J. Lo and them, they heard the record that I did for her (Mariah) somehow, and they thought the record was like incredible. So they called me and said, 'We want you to do a record for J. Lo's new single, I'm Real, but we need it now. Like right now. We're shooting the video Saturday.' It was like Thursday, I got the call. So they bring the record over, and drop it off. Like with no instructions, like, 'Do what you want Ja.' And that was the whole awkward thing about it, like, 'What do you mean? Do what I want.' I was like, 'I've never wrote a whole R&B record,' and it just shocked me. And he was like, 'Yeah, do what you want with it.'"
"If We", Ja Rule's R&B songwriting credit for Carey's Glitter, would have marked his R&B debut, but the effort was sideswiped by the summer release of J. Lo's "I'm Real" remix, which Ja Rule co-wrote. Carey alluded to another dispute with the J. Lo album in June, when she told MTV that a sample she intended to use for Glitter was stolen by an artist. Though Carey didn't name names, it was later revealed that her intentions to sample Yellow Magic Orchestra's "Firecracker" for her song "Loverboy" were bested by the J. Lo's album version of "I'm Real" which samples the '70s song. Carey later replaced the Yellow Magic Orchestra clip with a portion of Cameo's "Candy".
Mottola, who is also Carey's former husband, was rumored to be feuding with Carey, who left Sony's Columbia Records for a recording contact with Virgin Records. The poor sales of the Glitter soundtrack and movie prompted Carey to be released from the label last fall. Spokespersons for Lopez, Mottola, Ja Rule, and Irv Gotti did not reply to Launch by press time. (Launch)
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