REV. FARRAKHAN: Actual, an actual fight?

JA RULE: Yeah. Yeah. We, we fought in Atlanta. We fought in New York, in Hit Factory. So we, we've had our, we've had our [Laughs], our altercations.

REV. FARRAKHAN: But what was it over when, when you fought?

JA RULE: Uh, the first time we fought it was over the record. It was over the, the record he made or whatever, the "Murder, Murder" record. A mutual friend of ours stepped in and, and seen me in Atlanta and said, “You know, 50, you know, he, he, he, it’s just a record. He, you know, he didn't really mean nothing by the record. You know, Ja, talk to him. Will you talk to him for me?” And so I said, “Okay. You know, I'll, I'll do that. I'll talk to him for you.” You know, we, we, we have mutual friends involved and I'm a bigger man and I can, I can go in and, and holla. Let's holla.

So we get face-to-face and we talk. During the talk, that’s when it all came into play. I get mad quick and, and go off at the handle quick. So I, I, you know, I got mad and I started letting him know how I feel. Like, “I don't, I don't like you and I don't think what you’re doing is real, you know, I don't think what you’re doing is real.” You know, we, we come out and you make your records and you sell your records. That’s how it is. And if you catch a beef then you handle that. But you don't come into it with dissing this dude and dissing that dude and, yeah I'll – so I, I let him know that. Like I didn't, I wasn't feeling his whole style. And so he punched me. He snuffed me. So as he snuffed me, boom! I caught  him back. And now the fight is for real all over the place. We, we throwing down. We throwing down the thing. But, see, I felt the disrespect because our mutual friend pitted us to talk so you just violated the talk when you struck. And once that ensued, or whatever, that’s when the real, real beef started because now it’s a physical thing. We get back to New York City and again we're in Hit Factory and I hear from a mutual friend that he’s upstairs, in a studio upstairs. And me being the enraged guy that I was that evening, I, I took it upon myself to go pay him a visit upstairs. And we got it on again in there. And it got a little violent. You know…

REV. FARRAKHAN: What I see, my brother, is this is bigger than Ja Rule and 50 Cent. Two artists whom God has blessed with magnificent talent, you just can't touch all the people in the world that you both have touched and not have something very special. 50 Cent has it. You have it. Jay-Z has it. Snoop has it. So many of the brothers and sisters in hip-hop are gifted by God with this tremendous gift. And I know, Ja, as a young man I used to be a calypso singer.

JA RULE: Okay. [Laughs]

REV. FARRAKHAN: And in calypso you rhyme.

JA RULE: Right.

REV. FARRAKHAN: And there comes a time in calypso when you go to war to see who’s going to be the king of calypso.

JA RULE: Right. Right, right, right, right.

REV. FARRAKHAN: And it’s based on who can stand up and rhyme but make the other fellow look bad…

JA RULE: Right, right.

REV. FARRAKHAN: …in the rhyme and whoever rhymes the best and ranks over the over man…

JA RULE: Right.

REV. FARRAKHAN: …the best and gets the crowd on their side becomes the king…

JA RULE: Right.

REV. FARRAKHAN: …of calypso.

JA RULE: Right.

REV. FARRAKHAN: But it never reached the point where we became violent with one another or it struck the type of chord that was so divisive…

JA RULE: Right.

REV. FARRAKHAN: …that, that the fans would then take up the beef with each other.

JA RULE: Right.

REV. FARRAKHAN: And so what I see, Ja, is that there’s something afoot that I think we need to try and look to see if there’s a bigger picture. Now, you and 50 may have genuine dislike for one another for whatever the reason. But you’re both artists and you both touch millions of people and you both affect people in a way that your disagreement with 50 and his disagreement with you could ignite something that has the potential of becoming so violent that even hip-hop itself seems threatened by two giants going at each other not just in lyrics, not just in words but it’s coming down now to should one or both end up like Tupac and Biggie…Now, I realize that hip-hop is being threatened today. It’s bigger than Ja Rule, it’s bigger  than Eminem, it’s bigger than Dr. Dre or 50. Hip-hop is being threatened right now. Why? See, the media takes the beef between you and 50 and they play it.

JA RULE: Mm-hmm.

REV. FARRAKHAN: They jam it. They keep it going. Why? Why would they keep something going that will produce, could produce bloodshed? Why would they here, Ja, and this is what I want you and 50 and our hip-hop brothers and sisters to see.

JA RULE: When I first heard the records about me and with 50 with the record, I says, “You know what? I'm not – come on. I'm bigger than that and I ain't thinking about that, and let's continue this way, what we're doing as black men.” But then the public started to give me ridicule…

REV. FARRAKHAN: Mm.

JA RULE: …because they, I guess they were feeling like, “Since you’re not saying anything, you’re scared.” You understand what I'm saying? Like that’s, that was the, that was the, the overall premise. It’s like, “Oh, if he don't say nothing back then he must be scared of that nigga 50 then.” I don't care about that, you understand?

REV. FARRAKHAN: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know what?

JA RULE: And that’s what makes you…

REV. FARRAKHAN: [Interposing] But they were giving you, Ja, an opportunity to teach. See, you’re more than just a rapper. Do you, do you realize, Ja, that the children that go to school, they ain't learning their lessons.

JA RULE: Mm-hmm.

REV. FARRAKHAN: But whatever you say, whatever 50 say, whatever

JAY-Z, JAY-Z says or Cube or any of the rappers, they got that down. They memorized that.

JA RULE: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

REV. FARRAKHAN: So you are more than a hip-hop artist. You become a teacher through your rap.

JA RULE: Right.

REV. FARRAKHAN: So when the public starts calling for a fight, because that’s the way we grew up…

JA RULE: Mm-hmm.

REV. FARRAKHAN: “Oh, you see he dissed you, man!”

JA RULE: Mm-hmm.

REV. FARRAKHAN: “You ain't going to say nothing? You a punk!” See, when, when they come like that, how do you respond? You know, whenever we fought in school, none of our people ever tried to stop the fight.

JA RULE: Right.

REV. FARRAKHAN: They all put us in a circle…

JA RULE: Mm-hmm.

REV. FARRAKHAN: And they wanted to see who was going to win.

JA RULE: Right.

REV. FARRAKHAN: From childhood now, this is playing out in hip-hop, in gang warfare, in turf conflict. Tell me, Ja, how do you view the public clamor if you don't clap back? What, what, what do you feel from the public right now?

JA RULE: They're not going to respect me. If I don't, like, because, you know, we really went through this. Like I'm a dude, like, you know, whatever. You’re over there doing it because I don't… all the things he’s saying, it’s just talk, you know, it’s, it’s sticks and stones. You know, they don't break my bones. That old, that old cliché. But when the public gets involved and they're saying, “Well, Ja, if you ain't saying nothing then you must be scared,” or, or, or, “50 got you shook or whatever,” then it’s like, “Are y’all serious? Okay. Then let me go and do what I do so y’all understand.” Because it’s easy for me to make “clap backs” and, and, and those kind of records. Like it’s nothing for me to, to, to lyrically assault 50. It’s easy. But the public makes it so that we have to keep assaulting each other and, and they, they're not giving us a, a room to say, “Well, you know, I'm not thinking about him and I'm not thinking about him.” They're not giving us that space.

REV. FARRAKHAN: Okay. Now because the public is almost demanding from you a response to what you say 50 has said…

JA RULE: Well, before I say that, I just want to say there were other reasons why I didn't respond earlier as well, because I wanted to respond. Like hip-hop is a culture that if you are a hip-hop artist and you rap and, and you, you in this game, you feel you’re the best. Of course I feel I'm the best. So if anybody says anything foul or disrespectful against Ja Rule, Irv Gotti, Murder Inc., Ashanti, anybody, I'm going to go and attack and get them and let them know, “Don't say that about our family.” Because that’s how hip-hop was brought up, you know, on the beef. The whole, you know, like you said, the dozens thing. But it got outside of that. Sometimes the public, they don't let you go out and try to reach your full potential.

REV. FARRAKHAN: Hm.

JA RULE: They want you to stay ‘hood.

REV. FARRAKHAN: Okay. Now, Ja.There’s several lessons in what I'm hearing. Either we follow the public or we lead and teach the public. The public has an appetite for the beef. They love it.

JA RULE: Mm-hmm.

REV. FARRAKHAN: Now we have to get them to have an appetite for something that’s better than the destruction of one another. Now, what I failed to say earlier, Ja, is what I see coming. There’s a war being planned against Black youth and Hispanic youth in particular because of the nature of what is going on inside the streets of America. Now, the danger here, all of the young men that I saw on that beef, you have guns now. Everybody has a posse. All the posses are armed. We don't make no arms but arms are in the black community.

JA RULE: Mm-hmm.

REV. FARRAKHAN: We don't grow no drugs but the drugs permeate the black community. And when hip-hop says that we are thugs, we've come up out of the street and now we've learned to rap, which is a tremendous art form, but the hug that’s in us, now the enemy of all of us is watching. See, now a war is about to come down on the hip-hop community. This is what God has allowed me to see. The government has started now investigating Irv Gotti.

JA RULE: Mm-hmm.

REV. FARRAKHAN: And Murder, Inc.It ain't stopping there. They want to see if they can link you to that which allows them to use their court system against the leadership to wipe that out. But that ain't it. After they knock off the head, then they got to deal with the youth that’s in the street…

JA RULE: Mm-hmm.

REV. FARRAKHAN: …that have these guns and are macho, this kind of mentality that is like, “I'll kill you.”

JA RULE: Right.

REV. FARRAKHAN: And you seen the brother on the thing doing this.

JA RULE: Mm-hmm.

REV. FARRAKHAN: But when the rulers see this, they say, “We got to take back our streets.” And it’s this hip-hop culture that got the children upset, militant, even savage in the brutality that we are willing to inflict on one another because now the beefs have become such that, “I hate you. You hate me. And the next time we see each other we going to throw down.” But if you and 50 throw down it goes all the way down into the streets.  Now, the government is watching this. Now, what I see is to kill 50 – now, somebody intended to kill that brother. You don't shoot somebody nine times for them to come up out of that.

JA RULE: Mm-hmm.

REV. FARRAKHAN: So if he in his popularity now is wiped out and they can even subtly suggest that you did it or your people did it, then those that love 50 turn their guns on Ja. Now, this has to end at some point and we educate the public, “Don't call for Ja to clap back at 50 and 50 to clap back at Ja.” When we lose Biggie and Tupac or we lose Ja and 50 and then we go to scrapping in the street, our mothers cry out to the government, “Bring the National Guard in the ‘hood because they're killing our babies.” What’s happening is war is coming down on our youth. And that’s why I went throughout the country, Ja, talking about stop the killing.

JA RULE: Mm-hmm.

REV. FARRAKHAN: Then I had men- only meetings leading to the Million Man March.

JA RULE: Right.

REV. FARRAKHAN: But a whole 10 years now have passed. A whole new generation coming up. When we squashed the beef between East and West by the grace of God, a new generation has come up and you represent and 50 represent that new generation of hip-hop. I never want to see anything happen to you, Ja, and I never want to see nothing happen to 50. I want to see peace. And yeah, if you want to diss each other in the culture, that’s fine. But once we draw, go past the line, when we're talking about killing one another, see, once you say that in, in a, in a rap and they print it and put it out and that person is killed, the person who said it becomes the first person they come after. Now, you know, you had a motive. 50 had a motive because he been shot nine times. You got a motive because he dissed you in the public. So any one of you that go down, the next one that goes is the one that’s left. When Malcolm went down, Elijah Mohammed was the one that they really wanted so they killed two birds with one stone and darn near destroyed the nation.

JA RULE: Mm.

REV. FARRAKHAN: See? So if the two of you go at each other, then hip-hop now is threatened because you can't go on the road because the, the, the promoters are saying, “Look, we want to promote them but, man, we, if we let them in the venue we got to have all kind of insurance.” All these kind of things stop the money from flowing. So there are those at the top who say, “We got to stop this because it’s injuring our money.” But it’s bigger than money because the boys at the top want their children back.

JA RULE: Mm-hmm.

REV. FARRAKHAN: And the only way they can get their children back is to kill hip-hop as a force.

You are the guns. You are the, the, the muscle. You are the soldiers of a new idea, a new mind, a new spirit.

JA RULE: Mm-hmm.

REV. FARRAKHAN: And that is what is threatening. So the government, just like you saw in Tiananmen Square in China…

JA RULE: Mm-hmm.

REV. FARRAKHAN: …when they brought the tanks out…

JA RULE: Mm-hmm.

REV. FARRAKHAN: …against their own people…

JA RULE: Mm-hmm.

REV. FARRAKHAN: That’s what they're planning right now, for our young brothers and sisters who are unaware – they think, “Man, this cat dissed me. I'll pull out my stuff and deal with him,” but it’s bigger than that, man.

JA RULE: Mm-hmm.

REV. FARRAKHAN: They want to destroy this whole thing. You know, Jesus did a lot of good work, a lot of good work but the enemies of Jesus felt that He was a threat to Roman authority. The propaganda went to work on Jesus. And when they finally brought Him into court, the same people just a few days earlier that were cheering Him…

JA RULE: Mm-hmm.

REV. FARRAKHAN: …saying, “Hosanna in the highest,” the same people turned and said, “Crucify Him.” That’s how fickle sometime the public can be. You’re down this minute. You’re up the next.

JA RULE: That’s how I feel.

REV. FARRAKHAN: Yeah. But, but now, Ja, you can overcome that. See, if you let the public dictate and you continue to follow that, the end result will be death, destruction. 50 and you and me and us, we got to sit down at a common table and work out the way hip-hop is going on the next level. The grave is where we are right now. I'm talking about mentally.

JA RULE: Mentally.

REV. FARRAKHAN: See? But we got to come up out of that. And the power to come up out of that is the wisdom that you gain as a result of an increase in knowledge and understanding. And then you feed that gently into your lyric so the public say, “No, man. I'm glad Ja taught me better because I was about to thrown down and kill my brother.” Like you said, “I don't like 50,” and 50 said, “I don't like Ja.” So here’s a, a battle now, but it’s going from words to the gun. And that we have to stop. Your career does not depend on the public clamor. You think that. But if you feed the public something better and tell them why – yeah, “I'm, a, I'm, I'm a clap-back man but why I don't think I want to clap back, because if I do and you die then your blood is on my hands and I can't have that.” So I believe we can, I believe we can come through this, brother. See, what you feel for 50 and what 50 feels for you, nobody on our level can bridge that. God is the bridge to make two men who dislike each other. But God sees we're on the brink of a pit of fire but He don't want you burned or 50 burned or any of our youth burned. He wants to save us from that pit of fire and unite your hearts that you become brothers, even though today at this moment you see yourself as enemies. I love Ja Rule and I love 50 Cent. I love Irv Gotti. I love Lighty. Ain't none of you that I don't love because I see beyond where you are to what I know we're capable of becoming. And I don't believe, Ja, you've reached your full potential yet.

JA RULE: I haven't - I don't believe it either. [Laughs]

REV. FARRAKHAN: And, and I know there’s a world for you out there beyond even the world that you've touched. And if you look at the fame that God has given you, you didn't just do hip-hop. You wrote songs. You appealed to sisters with beautiful lyrics and whatnot. You’re broad. Very, broad. You can touch that genre and you can go all the way over. That’s an artist. I would like to ask Ja if Ja would be willing to sit at some point in the future or as quickly as we can with the rest of the brothers with whom there’s a beef. And I'll do my best to work to bring about peace so that you and 50 and all can continue your careers, but above all, to save young people from a plot that is bigger than you and 50…

JA RULE: Right.

REV. FARRAKHAN: …and all others…

JA RULE: Right.

REV. FARRAKHAN: …that have a beef.

JA RULE: Right.

REV. FARRAKHAN: Would you be willing, Ja, to sit with others to bring that about?

JA RULE: Absolutely. Because I see the bigger picture that you’re talking about. It’s not about me and 50’s personal beef. It’s about the, the overall state of hip-hop and, and, and the children that are coming up watching and learning and pitting themselves against each other because one rapper says he doesn't like the other rapper. I see the bigger picture. But for the sake of our children and things like that and, and, and the state of hip-hop and the well-being of hip-hop and what you’re saying, I understand it and I'd be very crazy and disrespectful to say I wouldn't sit down at that table to try to help hip-hop.

REV. FARRAKHAN: If the two of you come together, you heal so many wounds, wounds that you don't even see. And suppose after that we organize a peace tour?

FEMALE VOICE: Mm.

REV. FARRAKHAN: Oh. With him and

FEMALE VOICE: Mm.

REV. FARRAKHAN: Tearing up the country and the world. But the youth that are there, I mean, this brother could say, “Wankster,” he can say, “Clap back,” and then take it to another level and let everybody go out of there feeling the power of their youth and their strength…

JA RULE: Mm-hmm.

REV. FARRAKHAN: …and the newness of this young man who is really the formation of a whole new world.

MALE VOICE: Mm-hmm.

REV. FARRAKHAN: The Bible says, man, when those children of Israel came up on the Pharaoh…

JA RULE: Mm-hmm.

REV. FARRAKHAN: …God told Moses, “Let the old ones die out in the wilderness.”

JA RULE: Mm-hmm.

REV. FARRAKHAN: “And I'm going to take their children and they will inhabit the Promised Land.”

JA RULE: Yeah.

REV. FARRAKHAN: When I see you all, that’s what I see. I see the promise of everyone that died in slavery in you all. I see the strength in you but all I see is that the generation needs direction. You got everything you need to become powerful. Just guidance. Direction. And if I can supply that, my brothers can go on and build a whole new reality for themselves and for our people. And them three lovely children that you got, they'll never be at no graveside mourning because somebody in the night…

FEMALE VOICE: Right.

JA RULE: Mm-hmm.

REV. FARRAKHAN: …took out their daddy over some foolishness.

JA RULE: That’s right.

REV. FARRAKHAN: May God bless you, Ja. [Off-Mike Comments] May God bless you, Irv. May Godbless 50 and the crew that throws with him. May God bless hip-hop to rise to its full potential, to take the youth of the world and instead  of making them instruments of death, make them instruments of peace.

FEMALE VOICE: Ah.

REV. FARRAKHAN: Blessed are the peacemakers…

FEMALE VOICE: Right.

REV. FARRAKHAN: For they shall be called the children of God.

JA RULE: That’s right.

REV. FARRAKHAN: Thank you all.