By the early 2000s, every rapper, producer, and label with a weekly Billboard subscription had a new formula for a Top 40 hit: Get a rapper and a singer together to make a song for women. Murder, Inc. arguably had the slickest cheat code, pairing the label’s flagship artist Ja Rule’s surly love-laden raps with a sweet R&B voice like Christina Milian or a soulful gospel tone like Lil’ Mo. Around this time, a 19-year-old Ashanti met Murder, Inc.’s excitable co-founder, Irv Gotti, who, back then, didn’t want an upstart singer from suburban Glen Cove, Long Island, on his hardcore rap label. Instead, he enlisted her as an in-house songwriter and guest vocalist. Despite what Gotti told her in their initial meeting—that he wasn’t “an R&B dude”—he kinda was. His breadwinner, Ja, was a cosplaying 2Pac moonlighting as millennial rap’s Keith Sweat. His new secret weapon was an affable former high school track star who softened Ja’s aggressive balladeering.

Ashanti spent her early Murder, Inc. days writing for her life at Crack House Studios in Manhattan’s SoHo, surrounded by dice-rolling men—the little sister among “a den of wolves,” as Gotti described. She was the sweetie in a room full of so-called gangsters. Her voice wasn’t all that soulful or acrobatic. It was featherweight and more coy than cool, never at risk of overshadowing a song’s lead, which made her the perfect companion for rappers aiming to create sticky street anthems.

Millennial pop soon alternated between two distinct sounds: Ja Rule’s freaky outbursts and Ashanti’s gentle coos. She got her big break singing the hook on Big Pun’s posthumous 2001 single, “How We Roll.” From there, it was a full-on blitz. She sang background vocals on Ja’s monster Jennifer Lopez duet “I’m Real,” a summery jam built on a sample from Rick James’ 1978 weed ode “Mary Jane.” She backed Fat Joe’s crowing serenades on “What’s Luv.” Ja Rule plucked Ashanti again for his sophomore album’s second single, “Always on Time.” His semi-mushy, gaslight-ridden version of romance opens with Ashanti’s soft vocals setting up a toxic love story, complementing Ja’s bearish declarations about swinging dick and running on belated Jesus time. The song peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and set Murder Inc.’s low-key young hitmaker up for a smooth transition from utility player to solo star. The charts might’ve belonged to Ja, but he was no Ashanti.

By the time Ashanti’s self-titled debut dropped in April 2002, she was already a household name. The combination of her breakthrough solo single, “Foolish,” hitting No. 1 for 10 weeks, and “What’s Luv” at No. 2 made her the first woman to simultaneously occupy the top two spots on the Billboard Hot 100. The pop landscape was eager for a voice as sleek as Aaliyah’s after her death, and Ashanti thrived in the mid-tempo zone. Sometimes, too mid. Shortly after her debut dropped, over 20,000 people signed an online petition against her winning Soul Train’s Lady of Soul Award, citing her lack of “singing ability and stage presence.” Her vocals weren’t striking enough to blow out stadiums, but with no major rivals in her path and Beyoncé’s solo debut still a year off, Ashanti sat comfortably on her perch as America’s sweetheart.

Contemporary R&B was full of lush spins on the genre—an amalgam of classic soul from the likes of Angie Stone, Alicia Keys, and Raphael Saadiq; the boyish radio-ready charm of artists like Usher and Mario; and forward-thinking singers like Kelis, Amerie, and Truth Hurts. By May 2002, hip-hop and R&B collaborations made up about a fifth of the top 50 songs on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. Half of those records featured Ja, Ashanti, or both. It’s not a stretch to say Murder Inc.’s success likely influenced the Recording Academy’s creation of a new Rap/Sung category that year, later renamed Best Melodic Rap—Ja’s Case-assisted single “Living It Up” lost the inaugural award to Eve and Gwen Stefani’s “Let Me Blow Ya Mind.” Jay-Z and R. Kelly’s platinum-selling joint album, Best of Both Worlds, released earlier that year, further crystallized the trend.

Gotti prematurely dubbed Ashanti the Princess of Hip-Hop and R&B, positioning her as a successor to Mary J. Blige. But of course, the princess title was rooted in binary thinking. “Irv was like, ‘This is our princess. She’s not our bitch and ho. She’s our princess,’” Fat Joe recalled in 2003. Though Ashanti herself aspired to blend rhythm and blues with tough hip-hop beats like Blige, the blues part is much more subdued on Ashanti’s debut, which focuses more on surface melodrama and soft, curling melodies than a deep exploration of personal trauma. Her songs touch on darker aspects of relationships while still playing it safe stylistically—not as gorgeously raw and somber as an album like My Life but looking to capture a similar melancholy.

Ashanti’s solo album was released just two months before the premiere of American Idol, the singing competition show that could catapult new talent onto the pop charts. Her origin story would’ve fit right in with the heartwarming packaging of Idol contestants: a suburban Black girl whose father was a singer and whose mother, a former dance teacher, discovered her singing Blige’s “Reminisce” while vacuuming and thought it was a voice on the radio. By age 6, Ashanti was singing in church and local talent shows. At 14, she got her first record deal with Jive in 1994, but when the label tried to steer her toward pop, she rebuffed. She passed up Princeton and Hampton University scholarships to continue chasing her dreams and moved to Atlanta for a second deal with Epic’s subsidiary, Noontime. Label shake-ups again left her shelved and back in New York, where she had the fortuitous meeting with Irv Gotti that landed her at Murder, Inc.

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.”

The back-end sequel “Unfoolish” picks at the same scab as “Foolish” but with a dusted-off Biggie verse from “Fucking You Tonight.” The song was meant as a promotional single to assuage listeners. On the album, it’s used as a narrative full-circle moment to show Ashanti’s growth: “Proud to say I will never make the same mistake,” she sings. On the sentimental follow-up, “Dreams,” Ashanti sings, “Dreams are real/All you have to do is just believe.” Such was her style—a little bit cheesy, a little bit sweet.

Of course, a raging bull named 50 Cent soon ran Ja Rule off the charts and the streets, effectively ending the Murder Inc. dynasty. A federal indictment accelerated the label’s collapse. Still, Gotti retained control of Ashanti’s master’s up until two years ago when she announced she was re-recording her debut to reclaim ownership of the album and break free from Gotti’s control. Only recently have they both addressed their once-rumored romantic relationship, though Ashanti avoided defining it as such. She told Angie Martinez in 2023, “Manipulation played a heavy part in me and Irv’s situation.” Gotti, meanwhile, came across as a power player who got so emotionally involved with one of his artists that his other signees, Charli Baltimore and Vita, felt neglected on the roster. While Gotti claimed he conceived “Happy” during a post-coital shower, Ashanti later clarified that she wrote the song in a Long Island parking lot.

Gotti’s heavy hand is the main reason Ashanti’s debut feels programmed into oblivion. But despite its predictability, the album has a certain sonic purity that marks a shift in both sound and thinking for the industry at large. The rise of hip-hop and R&B collabs seemed like the natural order of the universe, an inevitable merger of two rapidly commercializing music genres carrying the New Jack Swing era’s momentum. Rappers today who might’ve once needed a soul singer to sweeten their sixteens can belt their own hooks. SZA has credited Ashanti’s minimalist style as a key influence on her own fluid sound. The genres are now cosmically intertwined. But for better and worse, Ashanti’s debut solidified an algorithm that’s since reached a point of singularity.