Today in Hip-Hop — June 26: Irv Gotti Would’ve Turned 56 Today, and the Murder Inc Math That Still Runs Pop-Rap

June 26, 1970. Irving Domingo Lorenzo Jr. is born in Hollis, Queens — Jam Master Jay’s neighborhood, A Tribe Called Quest’s neighborhood, Ja Rule’s future neighborhood, half of New York rap’s spiritual address. He’d grow up to become Irv Gotti, get the moniker from Jay-Z himself in 1995 (Jay called him “The Don of Hip-Hop,” a riff on John Gotti), produce “Can I Live” on Reasonable Doubt a year later, and spend the next decade running the most commercially-dominant Black-owned label of the early 2000s. This is his first birthday gone. The hemorrhagic stroke took him on February 5, 2025. He should be 56 today. He’s not.

The Murder Inc Math, Decoded

Here’s the receipt most people forgot. Between 2001 and 2003, Irv Gotti produced or A&R’d three Hot 100 #1s back-to-back-to-back: Jennifer Lopez’s “I’m Real (Murder Remix)” with Ja Rule, the “Ain’t It Funny” remix, and “Always on Time” by Ja Rule featuring Ashanti. Ashanti’s own “Foolish” hit #1 in 2002. That’s an unbroken pop-rap run that did to crossover radio what Bad Boy did to it five years earlier — only Gotti was doing it from a Def Jam imprint he co-founded with his brother Chris in 1999 on $3M of label advance, and he was producing the beats himself.

The catalog goes deeper than the singles. Gotti executive-produced Ja Rule’s Venni Vetti Vecci in 1999 (Murder Inc’s first release), Rule 3:36 in 2000 (3x platinum), and Pain Is Love in 2001 (3x platinum, the one with “Livin’ It Up” flipping Stevie Wonder’s “Do I Do”). He helmed Ashanti’s self-titled debut in 2002 (3x platinum, won the Best Contemporary R&B Album Grammy in 2003 — still the fastest-selling debut by a female artist of its era). Before all that, he was the A&R who pushed DMX through his first three Def Jam albums when nobody else inside the building knew what to do with X.

Then 2005: the feds dropped a money-laundering indictment that aimed at the Inc’s alleged ties to Queens drug money. Gotti and Chris were acquitted in late 2005. The verdict was clean. The label’s momentum never was. But the records he made between ’99 and ’03 still own a stretch of radio history that pop-rap producers — Metro Boomin, Mike WiLL, ATL Jacob — are still reverse-engineering the warmth of. That signature Murder Inc sound (sped-up soul samples wrapped around a Rule-and-Ashanti duet) was the template. Drake’s entire If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late melodic-rap project is downstream of it. So is half of what radio plays now.

The Hollis kid who got renamed by Jay-Z and turned Ashanti’s voice into a national mood made rap history that doesn’t get spoken about enough. Pour something out today.

Also Today in Hip-Hop

• 13 years ago (June 26, 2013): Killer Mike and El-P drop the self-titled Run the Jewels as a surprise free download on Fool’s Gold Records. Mike had announced the album for June 29 a week earlier; he tweeted on June 25 that they were moving it up. A one-off collab between an Atlanta veteran and a Brooklyn underground head becomes a flagship duo and arguably the most consistent rap partnership of the entire 2010s.
• 11 years ago (June 26, 2015): Ego Death by The Internet drops on Odd Future / Columbia. Syd’s third album as bandleader and the one that earned a Best Urban Contemporary Album Grammy nomination. It also introduced a 17-year-old Steve Lacy to the world — he co-produced “Dark Red” on his iPhone before he’d ever set foot in a real studio. Soul music’s quiet center of gravity for the back half of the 2010s starts on this date.
• 6 years ago (June 26, 2020): St. Louis rapper Huey (“Pop, Lock & Drop It,” #6 on the Hot 100 in 2007) dies in Kinloch, MO after being shot the night before. He was 32.

Stay creative — The Custom Creative Team

Jon Jones