December 4 — At the RHIGA Royal Hotel in Midtown Manhattan yesterday, Irv Gotti, with Ja Rule and Ashanti by his side announced that Murder Inc. Records was officially changing its name to The Inc Records. Ashanti’s Christmas CD was the first project to be release under the new name. “We’re good people,” Gotti said with emphasis throughout the press conference. Also present were Russell Simmons, Dr. Benjamin Chavis and Def Jam’s Lyor Cohen.
Irv Gotti relayed that the negativity surrounding the name Murder Inc. was overshadowing the talent on his label. After Ja Rule’s meeting with Farrakhan, Irv had a sit down with Russell and Lyor and decided to remove Murder from their name. It is more for the mainstream audience and media, he explained, because the hip-hop community knows that the term murder is slang. Irv Gotti also expressed his opinion that he did not accept Eminem’s apology about the “demo tape” and was more offended by his comment about it than the demo tape itself. “I am a lover of Black women,” Irv proclaimed. “If he had said it was just a freestyle, that would have been better than saying he had just broken up with an African American woman.”
In other news, TVT just released Kings Of Crunk II on November 25 featuring the “Get Low” remix with Elephant Man, Busta Rhymes and the Ying Yang Twins and the “Get Low” Merengue Mix along with Lil’ Jon’s catalog of videos from “Get Low” to “I Like Dem Girlz.” TVT is also dropping Crunk & Disorderly on December 9 with holiday jams like Ying Yang Twins’ “Ho!Ho!,” Bonecrusher’s “Guess Who’s Comin To Town,” David Banner’s “It’s Christmas Time (Jingle Bells)” and Killer Mike’s “A Christmas Grind.”
