DMX and others believed that Ja Rule ripped off DMX’s verbal style
“I had never had beef… If I had beef with Ja Rule, man, there wouldnt be a Ja Rule.” Such were DMXs words in a 2005 interview archived on YouTube. Shortly after, DMX slides into the same brutal growl-bark that garnered him his fame in the late 1990s. That sound of DMXs — the hyper-aggressive vocal fry — made him instantly recognizable. And as soon as Ja Rule hit the scene with 1999s Venni Vetti Vecci, the year after DMXs debut Its Dark and Hell is Hot, pretty much everyone cocked their heads and said, “Hey, this guy sounds like DMX.” And its undeniably true. A quick revisit to Venni Vetti Vecci (and later albums) illuminates exactly why lots of folks — including DMX, contrary to his former statement — said that Ja Rule was not only engaging in the proverbial highest form of flattery, imitation, but straight-up ripping DMX off.
Way back in 2002, DMX described on HipHopDX how he and Ja Rule had come to a common understanding out of the public eye. At the time, DMX was more concerned that Ja Rules fame had gone to his head, and that Ja Rule didnt reciprocate the kind of courtesy that DMX once showed him when Ja Rule was merely up-and-coming. Officially, DMX and Ja Rule ended their beef at the VH1 Hip Hop Honors in 2009, per All Hip Hop, when they posed for pictures.