50 Cent and Ja Rule Can't Even Agree on Why Their Famous Beef First Started — Here's the Tea

In the rap world, beefs are common. You have high-stakes careers butting heads with egos, street cred, and any number of reasons why powerful men and women might take serious issue with their rivals over actions both related and unrelated to their mutual music careers.

Case in point: the beef between rappers Curtis James Jackson III and Jeffrey Bruce Atkins. You know them best as 50 Cent and Ja Rule, respectively.

Their famous beef is one of the longest-lasting in the rap world, and it's a bit of a head scratcher because the dueling duo can't even agree on why the beef started to begin with. Here's a look back at why 50 Cent is so adamantly anti-Ja, and why Ja doesn't care as much as his so-called rival.

There are few rap beefs that have the longevity and grit as the one between 50 and Ja. But how did it start? The answer depends on who you ask, as is the case with so many "family" feuds. According to The Independent, 50 Cent says it's because a friend of his robbed Ja Rule. But Ja Rule says it's because he didn't include 50 Cent in a music video that he wanted to be in.

Regardless of how the beef started, it's been going since 1999.

Things escalated in 2000 when a friend allegedly convinced the duo to sit down and have a talk while in a nightclub in Atlanta. Things escalated after Ja Rule claims he insulted 50 Cent, 50 Cent took a swing at him, and Ja Rule's group apparently beat 50 Cent with a baseball bat.

Also in 2000, 50 Cent got stabbed. Initially, another industry pro feuding with 50 Cent was blamed: Irv Gotti. But one of Ja Rule's Murder Inc. cohorts, Black Child, later admitted to the stabbing, claiming it was self-defense.

The two have released multiple diss tracks about each other through the years, making the feud very personal as they take swings at one another's parenting, among other things. In 2018, 50 Cent even got super petty, buying out 200 tickets at a Ja Rule concert in the front four rows, just to keep them empty (per Complex).

Perhaps the most interesting part about the beef is that Ja Rule may not care as much as 50 Cent does. In a 2024 interview with Piers Morgan, Ja Rule opened up about his feelings on the matter, suggesting that it's 50 Cent keeping things going.

He explained, "I’m cool, Piers. I really don’t do social media like that at all… But I’m really not the social media guy like that. So I don’t really get into the back and forth with him," adding, "You never see me say anything about him. I just mind my business, do my business… I don’t do the back and forth."

Ja Rule may not do the back and forth, but it seems a little suspicious that his former Murder Inc crew was involved with so much in the early years of the feud, if nothing else.

Either way, it seems like the feud is unlikely to end any time soon. And, really, what would fans do without the diss tracks they release about each other?