Ashanti saw those formative setbacks as preparation for the boot camp that was Murder, Inc., where Gotti would have his artists battle each other for beats and recognition, like a rap version of ROTC. Whoever wrote the hottest lyrics got to claim the beat. At one point, Ashanti recorded a reference track for Jennifer Lopez’s “I’m Real” remix, written by Ja. (In an epically petty move, Sony Music’s head, Tommy Mottola, had apparently tasked Gotti with crafting a hit song for J. Lo to keep Mottola’s ex-wife, Mariah Carey, from the No. 1 spot.) Unbeknownst to Ashanti, Gotti kept her background vocals in the song’s final mix, fueling the infamous myth that Lopez had tried to pass Ashanti’s voice off as her own. Ashanti co-wrote another J. Lo record, “Ain’t It Funny (Remix)” and lobbied to keep the song for herself. She could’ve been stuck stunting as a cameo queen while her work helped legitimize J. Lo’s “Jenny from the Block” persona, but those records quietly set the stage for Ashanti’s string of hits.
Still, it wasn’t until Ashanti delivered another chart-topper that Gotti fully committed to signing her to Murder, Inc. Her breakthrough solo single, “Foolish,” was a soap opera without a plot, an engrossing tale of self-destruction about craving the comfort of a bad relationship. Gotti effectively took the HOV lane to the top of the charts, using a loop from producer 7 Aurelius that was originally created for Brandy and featured the same DeBarge sample as the Notorious B.I.G.’s hit “One More Chance.” While this fusion of old and new sounds effortless on “Foolish,” the execution is clunky throughout Ashanti’s debut. Her intro blends snippets of her star collabs into an EPK-like medley with a screwed male voice announcing, “And now, for our featured presentation…”
Despite their sometimes captivating sense of ease and simplicity, the album cuts never quite match the pomp and circumstance of her debut single. “Foolish” bleeds into its counterpart, “Happy,” a sparse, sunlit ode to Ashanti discovering the love she’d been searching for all her teenage life, with airy flutes that sound like she’s kicking her feet up on a swing. On “Leaving (Always On Time Part II),” the sequel to her and Ja’s breakout hit, he reprises his role as the cheating lover attempting reconciliation. “Call” finds Ashanti rephrasing the sentiment a third time: “When you call, I’ll be right there,” a clumsy attempt to squeeze the last bit of juice from a single idea.
Gotti’s blatant attempt to brand Ashanti as Blige’s heir apparent plagues tracks like “Scared” and “Rescue.” The former is a gloomy groove where his voice lurks in the background like a devil on the shoulder while Ashanti debates letting go of a tumultuous relationship. The latter track repurposes the creeping keys from “Leaving” into a gloomy plea for escape. Gotti reappears as a bruised ex in a subsequent skit, leading into the moody breakup record “Over,” which follows all the back-and-forth contemplations from the previous songs to its logical conclusion. On “Baby,” Ashanti drops her voice to a compelling lower register, a yearning tone that cuts through the album’s vague narratives. Gotti shamelessly ripped the exact rhythm and “Mary, Mary, Mary…” melody from Scarface’s 1997 single “Mary Jane,” laced over producers 7 Aurelius and Chink Santana’s keys to create an operatic ballad about being sucked into a love jones. In recalling his own ingenious move in BET’s 2022 Murder Inc. documentary, Gotti says with a smirk: “Not only did we take the beat, I had Ashanti take Scarface’s flow.”
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM