First gaining the attention of Def Jam bigwig Lyor Cohen due to his standout appearance on Mic Geronimo's 1995 single, 'Time to Build,' Ja was positioned as next in line after DMX and Jay Z as the new saviors of the label. Records, a powerhouse label headed by Irv Gotti. But the third member of the trio that dominated that era was Ja Rule, the flagship artist on Murder Inc. A few artists from the southern and western regions of the country were able to make noise in a big way, but New York was still considered the epicenter of hip-hop and ruled with an iron first for much of the late '90s and the early '00s, much off the strength of three particular artists on Def Jam Records.ĭMX and Jay Z were the first two to crash the party with multi-platinum albums that helped save Def Jam as a label and put the brand back on the map as the most powerful entity in hip-hop.
The Y2K scare passed and the new millennium arrives, with rappers continuing to take the genre to heights that it had never seen before.
The year 2000 was a major moment for hip-hop.
