Released October 2, 2001 Length 62:07 Artist Ja Rule | Recorded 2000–01 Label Murder Inc., Def Jam Release date 2 October 2001 | |
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Pain Is Love
(2001) The Last Temptation
(2002) Genres Hip hop music, Gangsta rap, Contemporary R&B, East Coast hip hop Producers Irv Gotti, Lil Rob, Ty Fyffe Nominations Grammy Award for Best Rap Album, Soul Train Music Award for Best Album of the Year Similar Ja Rule albums, Hip hop music albums | ||
Pain Is Love is the third studio album by American rapper Ja Rule. Produced by Irv Gotti, it was released on October 2, 2001, by Def Jam and Murder Inc Records. The album received a mixed reception from critics. Pain Is Love debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and was supported by three singles: "Livin' It Up", "Always on Time", and "Down Ass Bitch". It was certified triple-platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for selling over 3,000,000 copies. The sequel of the album, titled Pain Is Love 2 (2012).
Contents
Reception
Pain is Love received generally mixed reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 59, based on 10 reviews.
AllMusic's Jason Birchmeier praised the album for fine-tuning the formula set by Rule 3:36 of having R&B crossover singles and hardcore rap tracks to balance out the whole record. An editor from HipHopDX said that hardcore tracks like "Dial M for Murder" and "Worldwide Gangsta" felt like forced attempts to bring back Ja's thug persona, but praised the album for having tracks that contain ear-grabbing lines and good beats, saying that "Pain Is Love is another positive establishment that will indeed create more popularity and more fan acknowledgement for Ja Rule." Steve 'Flash' Juon of RapReviews found Ja's singing voice on some tracks intolerable but gave the album credit for containing tracks that display Irv Gotti's producing talents and Ja's adequate lyricism, concluding that, "Ja Rule will live up to the latter half of his name and dominate the charts for the latter half of 2001 with an album that is undoubtedly his most solid release to date."
Soren Baker of the Los Angeles Times gave credit to the singles "Livin' It Up" and "I'm Real" for being the album's strong points but criticized tracks like "The Inc" and "Worldwide Gangsta" for being bland and less effective, saying they "recycle hard-core themes without adding any clever phrasings or creative beat work to compensate for their ordinariness." Nathan Rabin of The A.V. Club criticized the album for lacking substance to go with the catchy pop hooks and Ja for making what they perceive as failed attempts to copy 2Pac, specifically on the penultimate feature track "So Much Pain" concluding that "even at less than his best, 2Pac still conveys a sense of urgency and purpose that illustrates incontestably the huge chasm separating the real deal from a canny imitation."
Commercial performance
Pain is Love spawned two number one hit singles, debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 chart with sales of 361,000 copies in the first week and was certified multi-platinum in the United States. It also received a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Album in 2002 but lost to OutKast's Stankonia.
Track listing
"Dial M for Murder"
"Down Ass Bitch"
"Livin' It Up"
"Pain Is Love"
"Pain Is Love (Skit)"
"So Much Pain"
Songs
1Pain Is Love (skit)1:18
2Dial M for Murder3:33
3Livin' It UpCase4:17