Ms. Jade

'8 Mile' Soundtrack Edges Timberlake To Top Billboard Albums Chart

13 Nov 2002 15:14:00 EST

Justified takes #2 behind the unstoppable Eminem machine.
By Joe D'Angelo

Despite a strong first-week showing from Justin Timberlake's solo debut, the "8 Mile" soundtrack will stay a stride ahead of the 'NSYNC singer on next week's Billboard albums chart.

Timberlake Justified his #2 position with more than 439,000 copies sold, according to SoundScan figures released Wednesday. However, fueled by the adrenaline-inducing single "Lose Yourself" and the momentum associated with the film topping weekend box-office charts (see " '8 Mile' Goes The Dista nce With Record-Breaking Opening Weekend""), the Eminem-stamped soundtrack bested the NSYNCer's LP by more than 68,000 copies to bring its two-week total to more than 1.2 million.

Eminem's über-presence in the media last week made more than 114,000 people realize that he's not just a movie star — he's got an album out, too. Sales to those catching on late in the game allowed The Eminem Show to continue its 25-week engagement in the top 10. The LP actually increased its weekly sales tally from last week's 99,000, nudging it up a slot on to #7. In all, the rapper's third major-label album clocks in with total sales upwards of 6.5 million.

Picked from hits of the last decade, including "Beautiful Day," "One" and "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of," U2's "The Best Of 1990-2000 will debut at #3 with more than 184,000 copies sold. The landing surprised many chart watchers, not the least of whom is Christina Aguilera, whose second album, Stripped, will drop to #4 (168,000) in its second week.

Jaheim got into the #8 slot with Still Ghetto (see "Jaheim Shooting For 10 Million With Still Ghetto"), his follow-up to last year's Ghetto Love, while fans are still gettin' into the Dave Matthews Band big time. The group's Live at Folsom Field - Boulder, Colorado, which will follow at #9, continues their streak of high-charting LPs. Since 1994's breakthrough Under the Table and Dreaming, eight of their nine full-length albums — including live records — have placed in the top 10. Listener Supported, released in 1999, came in at #15.

Elsewhere in the chart's top 10, Santana's Shaman will slip a spot to #5; Faith Hill's Cry will maintain its #6 position for the second week, and Nirvana's greatest hits collection, Nirvana, will bring up the rear, falling seven spots from its #3 debut. Juggalos nationwide united to give the Insane Clown Posse their highest chart debut in three years. The harrowing harlequins' latest album, The Wraith: Shangri-La (see "Insane Clown Posse Find Light (And Hotties, Homies, Faygo) At End Of Tunnel"), will land at #15 with more than 76,000 copies sold. Only 1999's The Amazing Jeckel Brothers, — which came in at #4 and sold nearly twice as much — proved a more successful debut for the clown-faced couple.

"The Other Side," the first single from acoustic softie David Gray's latest album, A New Day at Midnight, helped propel the new release into top 20 territory. The British bard's fifth album will land at #17 after selling more than 71,000 copies in its first week.

In July, he presented the Inc. Now Irv Gotti has served more dishes with a new twist from his posse (see "Irv Gotti Shooting Ja Rule, Bobby Brown, Charli; Reveals Remixes List "), and hip-hop heads are salivating for a taste. Irv Gotti Presents the Remixes, featuring new takes on tunes by Ashanti ("Unfoolish"), Toni Braxton ("Me and My Boyfriend"), and Ja Rule ("No One Does It Better"), among others, will come in at #24 with more than 46,000 copies sold.

The Wallflowers' make their second attempt to match the success of their 1996 breakthrough, Bringing Down the Horse, with Red Letter Days (see "Red Letter Days Shows Wallflowers Aren't Leaving The Dance"), which will place at #32 with more than 38,000 copies sold. Unfortunately for Jakob Dylan and company, 2000's Breach fared far better after its first week in stores, having come in at #13 with more than 80,000 copies sold.

Other notable debuts on next week's chart include Italian opera singer Andrea Bocelli's Sentimento at #12 (98,000); "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" soundtrack alum Alison Krauss' Live at #36; classic rockers Boston's first full-length album of new material in eight years, Corporate Ame rica, at #42; Eric Clapton's two-disc tour re-visitation, One More Car, One More Rider, at #43; Missy Elliott and Timbaland protégé Ms. Jade's Girl Interrupted at #51; R&B crooner Brian McKnight's 13-year retrospective, From There to Here 1989-2002, at #62; living legend Johnny Cash's latest covers album, Amercian IV: The Man Comes Around, at #70; Grandes Exitos, a best-off culled from Shakira's three Spanish-language albums, at #80; Björk's Greatest Hits at #115; Badly Drawn Boy's uncharacteristically peppy pop album (see " Badly Drawn Boy Salutes Cobain, Turns Down Madonna"), Have You Fed the Fish? at #135; and Ours' second LP, Precious, at #187.

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Ms. Jade, Nelly Furtado Battle Timbaland On Video Set

23 Sep 2002 15:12:00 EDT

Jade calls in salon sisters for backup in 'Ching, Ching.'
By Shaheem Reid

Now that she's chasing people with Hummers and using Nelly Furtado to help double-team Timbaland in a verbal fight, Ms. Jade has sure come far since her days making videos as a junior miss.

"I was in the house making videos before I knew I wanted to [make music for living]," Jade said last Thursday in Los Angeles, where she just finished shooting the clip for "Ching, Ching" with director Mark Classon. Currently, the first female to emerge from Timbo's Beat Club imprint can be seen acting as a daredevil in the video for Pastor Troy's "Are We Cuttin'."

"It's [about] getting comfortable in front of all the people," she said. "I used to be in the house with the Camcorder, putting on silk pajamas, doing my own videos. I was lipsynching Total and Lil' Kim, making little mini videos."

In the full-scale production for "Ching, Ching," Jade and Timbaland play a couple who are on the outs. "He's my man in the video," she iterates, so that people won't confuse their onscreen romance with their brother/sister relationship off camera. (Click here for photos from the video shoot)

"The concept is basically showing how I got to not wanting to be with him no more," the Philadelphia native explained. "The video is, I catch him with three girls just chillin' in the car. I drop the kids off. We get in a car chase. He's driving in a Hummer, I'm driving in a Hummer — it was like a video/Hummer commercial.

"I go get my girls from the hair salon," she continued. "We're about to fight the other girls. It's crazy, some regular ghetto stuff. I go to his crib and smash all types of stuff up. I get to vent on this one."

Nelly Furtado, who sings the cut's hook, also helps Jade to release some steam.

"Nelly is a girl on my side," Jade said. "You see her walking with the headphones on, and then when [me and Timbaland] are arguing, she's backing me up. Then when she's talking to him, I'm backing her up. It's like a big argument in the middle of the street. You see people coming out with shower caps and robes, then people get locked up.

"I worked with her before," Jade explained. "I was on tour with her, but we really had fun. The video was all night, and I never did no night shoot, so I was sleepy as hell."

Jade didn't get any shuteye either on the set of "Are We Cuttin'," but she did get "high."

"Man, they had me doing all types of crazy sh--, but it was cool," she said of working with director Marc Klasfeld on the Pastor Troy clip. "They cut this part out, but they had me 30 feet in the air on this harness thing. We had to go up 30 feet in the air, carrying a glass. Three times I had to do it. Then they had us jumping [off the] roof on this fake platform thing. It wasn't that far, but it was far enough. I'd seen three people do it before me, so I said I wanted to do it."

"Ching, Ching" is the second single from Jade's debut, Girl Interrupted, which is now due October 22 (see "Ms. Jade's 'Big Head' Is Meant To Move Your Big Butt"). Aside from her own solo endeavors, she has also recently laid vocals on tracks for Slum Village and Petey Pablo.

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Ms. Jade's 'Big Head' Is Meant To Move Your Big Butt

11 Jun 2002 07:51:00 EDT

Single's about getting people on the dance floor, not getting at 'em on the playground.
By Shaheem Reid

"You've got a biiiiig head."

It's the first insult many people dish out during their childhood — the perfect slur for kindergarteners. You don't have to put too much thought into the verbal jab, and no matter what size dome your adversary has, it always seems to hit 'em where it hurts.

Twenty-two-year-old Ms. Jade says she means no harm in her new song "Big Head." The Philadelphia rapper, whose Girl Interrupted is due in June, just wanted to provoke people to move something.

"It's nothing in particular when I say, 'Get your big head on the floor,' " Jade explained. "I use it for guys I see in the club who are too thugged to dance or girls that are too prissy to dance, like, 'Get your big head on the floor.' There might be that one song to make you get up, and I want ['Big Head'] to be that song."

Produced by Timbaland, the cut features Jade rapping seductively, using a rhyme pattern that repeats the last word of many lines. "Interrupted girl, girl/ Representing for the world, world/ ... Make you feel free, free/ We ain't even in the same league, league," she says until the chorus kicks in: "Get your big head on the floor/ You ain't never seen me groove like this."

"When I first heard the beat, it was so sick," she said of the Timbaland track that has a feel of funk and country mixed in Arabic stylings. "Everybody was in the studio half-asleep. When they heard the beat, people started nodding their heads and kicking their feet. That's how we knew it could be the single. The beat is so groovy it made me want to do something different, just trying to freak the beat out a little bit."

Jade, who's been out on the road performing at various shows with artists like Nelly and Ludacris, recently shot a clip for "Big Head" with director Chris Robinson.

"It's a little girl that morphs into me," Jade said of the first video she's starred in. "And some of the heads get big — probably three of the heads get big. It's basically a performance-type thing. You see me dancing and fun, bubbly, girly backgrounds. Then when you get to the end of the song, it's this song called 'Champion' — that's where I get gutter and take it back to the 'hood.

" 'Champion' is basically me telling people why I think I'm the champ," she said. "You know how Muhammad Ali came out telling people why he thinks he's the champ, 'I'm so pretty,' I'm coming out like that. I just started, but I know I'm the champion. I've been through so much I gotta be the champion. Everybody else can be a champion too. Whatever you do, you could be a champion."

The video for "Big Head" should be out within the next two weeks, Jade said, and features guest spots by Timbaland and Bubba Sparxxx.

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Ms. Jade

Ms. Jade Gives Up Hustling, Hair School For Timbaland's Beat Club

15 Mar 2002 07:54:00 EST

Hunger, persistence pay off for Philly MC.
By Shaheem Reid

If you think that your favorite artists are sitting around the studio sharing cheese fries and downing sodas while they work on collaborations, you have another thing coming. When somebody makes a cameo appearance on another performer's song, most of the time the two parties aren't even in the same state.

Such was the case for Timbaland/Missy Elliott protégé Ms. Jade and Nelly Furtado. Although they've appeared on two songs together, the two first crossed paths last week when Jade made a surprise appearance at Furtado's New York show.

"[That] was my first time meeting her," Jade said the night after the concert. "She's on my album and I'm on her album. She's real cool. Not stuck up at all. I dig that about her."

Jade was also digging how the crowd at the Hammerstein Ballroom received her as she performed her lyrics from the "Turn Out the Lights" remix. She must have made a good impression, as the rapper has now been tapped to open for Furtado on her spring tour (see "Nelly Furtado Testing New Material On Spring Tour").

Jade, who's signed to Timbaland's Beat Club imprint, has been dreaming of spitting for crowds ever since she was a young buck coming up in Philly with fellow puppy-powered line throwers like State Property's Chris and Neef, who lived two blocks down from her.

"I was working everywhere," she said of her time before she was discovered. "The Gap, Express, Old Navy. I was selling fake pocketbooks. I was hustling."

She stopped struggling with odd jobs long enough to go to hair school, where she would cultivate her craft while she was supposed to be hooking up her customers' dos. "I'm getting in trouble for writing when I'm supposed to be doing something else," she recalled, "but the rhymes was pulling me close, like, 'This is what I want to do.' " After she graduated, finding ways to break into the rap game became her full-time gig.

"I didn't want a job anymore," Jade remembered. "I said, 'I'm 'a make it or die trying.' I would be on the corners, bus stops, ball games — wherever people was spitting at, I was there. I would leave 16 bars on people's 2ways and answering machines. I'd be the last chick standing most of the time, battling cats. That was my favorite part of the game, just being hungry."

That hunger was satiated when she met Missy Elliott a couple of years ago in a studio after being introduced by an executive at Elektra Records. "I spit for Missy," she recalled. "Missy turned around, called Tim, like, 'Listen to this.' I'm spitting for Tim over the speakerphone. Then it was on. I went out to L.A. for about three weeks, and it was everybody in the studio working. It was Ginuwine, Tweet, Missy, me, Tim. It was like, I'm the new rookie to everything."

Being the new jack to the crew meant learning how to ride Tim's roller coaster-like production. Jade couldn't quite get the hang of it at first.

"Tim put his beats on and I start writing, he was like, ['Nah']," she said, giggling. "I was like, 'What?' I know my thing is tight. He was like, 'Look, you're not on beat.' I was used to rapping a certain way. He had to sit there and show me.

"One day we were driving in the car. He came and picked me up and was like, 'Listen.' He just taught me how to listen to the drum and listen to everything. He taught me how to flow."

She needed every bit of that tutelage for her late spring release, Girl Interrupted, as she had some pretty hefty guest stars jumping on tracks with her. Besides Furtado on "Ching, Ching, Ching" (which she'll shoot her first video for in the next few weeks), Bubba Sparxxx, Petey Pablo and Lil' Mo also checked in, as did Jay-Z on "Count It Off."

"That song is showing the flow," Jade said of the collaboration. "It's a cute party song. To me, it's showing I can keep up with him. He's not stepping on my toes."

Her current single, "Feel the Girl," has hit the underground to get everybody ready for the full album.

" 'Feel the girl' was in the hook, and the song made you feel it," Jade said of the cut's title. "The song is basically me introducing myself to the rap game, basically showing you how I get down. What me and my girls deal with, how I deal with certain situations."

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