Crooning once more

Ja Rule probably should have battled fellow rapper 50 Cent with sticks and stones, considering what happened after their war of words.

A few years ago, Ja Rule was among the most popular – and overexposed – figures in hip-hop. His first four albums had sold millions of copies each. His deep, gravelly voice, either in rap form or an off-key warble, punctuated hit after hit. He enjoyed numerous collaborations with artists ranging from J.Lo to Jay-Z to labelmate Ashanti.

Then 50 Cent blew up with the song “Wanksta,” a thinly veiled attack calling Ja a fake gangsta wannabe perpetrating a tough-guy image. Even though Ja fired back on underground songs, interviews and last year’s “Blood in My Eye” album, the image seemed to stick.

As his beef with 50 Cent escalated, the man born Jeffrey Atkins suddenly became uncool. His catchy harmonizing was considered wack and weak. Some said the verbal wounds would be fatal to his career.

Not quite. Despite being the object of 50’s ridicule and many rap fans’ scorn, Ja is on the verge of a comeback at age 28.

His sixth album, “R.U.L.E.,” set for release Tuesday, is being buoyed by the hit “Wonderful,” featuring R. Kelly and Ashanti. He’s still crooning badly, still rhyming with the same blustery excitement.

“I’m gonna make my records and do what I do with my peoples and have a good time with life, and you know, we wanna get back to having fun, making you dance in the club, and party, because that’s what real gangstas do, they party,” he says.

Both he and 50 Cent hail from the New York City borough of Queens. They’d been friendly, until one of 50’s friends robbed Ja of his jewelry at a nightclub. The tiff soon became public, and 50 seemed to thrive from it – as he once boasted on stage, he built his career on the feud.

Ja may have been an easy target; one minute he was bumping and grinding with Jennifer Lopez, the next he was on movie screens in “The Fast and the Furious.” For some, he got too big, and perhaps strayed too far from his early, thugged-out image. So when 50 came to take him down, people were waiting for the fall.

“When you’re a big artist, people wanna see you fall sometimes, and it’s like that,” Ja says. “This is human nature, and I really had to step back and understand.”

So he decided to just ride out the turbulence and lower his profile. The married father of three was conspicuously absent from Ashanti’s sophomore set last year, his ubiquitous collaborations dried up and he made few celebrity appearances.

But he never stopped hanging out among the people, even when the haters were at their loudest, when strangers were screaming epithets at him in clubs or shouting “G-g-g-G-g-g-G-UNIT!” – the rallying cry of 50’s clique. Because at the same time he was vilified, he also knew that there were die-hard fans still there.

“When (fans) see me, I’ll be out and about, I’m getting love,” he says. “So it was kind of confusing me – like, ‘Dang, how can I get hated on?’ “

Meanwhile, longtime friend Irv Gotti had to deal with a federal investigation of his Murder Inc. label (since renamed The Inc.) due to their association with convicted drug kingpin Kenneth “Supreme” McGriff. Authorities have suspected that McGriff used the label to launder drug money. No charges have been filed, although the investigation does not appear to be closed.

“That was more stressful than anything, not knowing if they were going to send us to jail or not,” says Ja, who noted that the company lost major deals and partnerships because of the probe. “(Y)ou really start to think, ‘This is how they can stop these black companies from making money – put an investigation on them.’ “

Last November, Ja put out “Blood in My Eye,” his official response to the 50 Cent beef. Though it was his first album to sell less than a million copies, Gotti says it served its purpose.

“I think ‘Blood in My Eye’ has a lot to do with the success he’s getting now,” says Gotti. “(Fans) said, ‘All right, he answered the beef, it’s back to business.’ “

At Jay-Z’s all-star blowout concert at Madison Square Garden last Monday, Ja got one of the evening’s biggest ovations.

“The whole time I felt like, it’s a phase, because when I go out, I got the hate, but I got love too,” he says.