'What’s Luv': Clueless Ashanti almost got replaced by J.Lo.


More interesting revelations has surfaced from Ashanti's Instagram Live chat with Fat Joe. Apparently, he told Ashanti that Irv Gotti and Ja Rule wanted to take her off 'What’s Luv' and replace her with Jennifer Lopez instead to make it “for the Latinos.” Ashanti never knew!

Fat Joe stood his ground and kept her on the song which was a better choice. See how shady the music industry was in those days? It makes a lot of sense as J.Lo was the bigger artist in 2001. This was also during that same time period when Sony (or more specifically, Tommy Mottola) was taking sounds and collaborations from Mariah Carey and giving them to J.Lo. Ashanti had some talent but despite J.Lo's lack of talent, she had the marketability.

Ashanti's pen game helped to launch Jen's career, and she found herself watching on the sidelines as Jen sang her songs with HER vocals still on the record. Jen was this new debuting pop sensation just starting out in her music career. The hype machine (prior to her break-out role with 'Selena' and relationship with Sean Combs) sparked massive interest. It explains why Ja Rule was more invested in J.Lo’s career than Ashanti’s (Tommy Motola too.)

Ashanti still went on to have a very successful and lucrative career. She was credited as a background vocalist/songwriter, and she had other large hits of her own. Irv and Ja Rule continuously used Ashanti to build J.Lo up without giving her the proper respect and that simply was NOT okay.

3 Comments:

Benny said...

Not for nothing, that was the reason why Amerie almost lost 1 Thing to J-Lo! J-Lo was the bigger artist & if she had 1 Thing & Get Right, her album might have sold about 2 or 3 million! 1 Thing is Amerie's biggest hit but the album only went Gold! They look for the hits & try to give it to J-Lo!

Toya said...

I definitely remember that.

Benny said...

I think Tommy & the execs at Sony tried to use the jedi mind trick on Rich Harrison & told him 1 Thing was gonna flop! Crazy In Love already proved Donny & Columbia wrong, so they couldn't fool Rich & Amerie & I think it was already on the Hitch soundtrack!