Ja-Rule Called Himself the LeBron James of Rap. Let's Help Him Find Some More Appropriate Analogies

Well, we’ve come to that once-a-year-event where Ja-Rule manages to sneak himself into a headline. This time, it’s over a claim he made that he is the LeBron James of rap, raising questions that Ja may not actually know who LeBron James is and what he does.

Ja-Rule (birth name: Jeffrey Atkins) gave himself the title via an Instagram hashtag, which ran alongside a longer message to Eminem, who name dropped Ja-Rule on two different songs.

From Okayplayer:

Eminem name-dropped Ja on “Greatest” and “Killshot,” rapping “You ain’t never made a list next to no Biggie, no Jay/Next to Taylor Swift and that Iggy hoe, you about to really blow/Kelly, they’ll be putting your name/Next to Ja, next to Benzino—die, motherfucker!/ Like the last motherfucker sayin’ Hailie in vain.”

Well, Ja apparently felt a way about it, taking to Instagram to do some virtual chest-beating.

“The more Em Mentions my name the more I realize how fucking LEGENDARY I am…I was killing the game so hard that all the biggest rappers in the industry (at the time) joined forces to dethrone the God,” he wrote, adding “my music TIMELESS.”

For good measure, Ja-Rule’s 42-year-old ass added the hashtags “#Iconn #LebronJamesofthisrapshit #itshardtobeatgoldenstate”.

I can think of nothing more tepid than 40-something-year-old beef, but here we are, microwaving that Chef Boyardee-quality shit.

In the spirit of this very important news, here’s a Ja-Rule-sized list of all the things he is actually the LeBron James of:

Looking like a gerbil in a hoodie

Attaching himself to ridiculous white folk-scammery and getting away with it (“It’s Fyyyyyrreeee”)

Looking like a hamster in sweatpants

Remembering who Ja-Rule is

Looking like a guinea pig in sunglasses

Because we at The Root are generous folk who love to lend a helping hand, here is another short list of figures and items for whom it would appropriate for Jeffrey Atkins to compare himself to:

The Matthew Stafford of Rap

The Bojan Bogdanovic of Rap

The Shane Battier of Rap

The Cleveland Browns of Rap

The Cherokee Jeans of Rap

The Cheez Whiz of Rap

The Dillard’s of Rap

The Gus Frerrote of Rap

The 7Up Cherry of Rap

The Target sneakers of Rap

The 2-Pack Special Fabuloso of Rap

The “Beyoncé is no Ashanti” of Rap

The Samsung Mobile Ad at the Top of The Root Site of Rap

That’s all.