Rap Label Drops 'Murder' From Its Name

[TexasStooge]

Rapper Ja Rule's record label was cleared of "Murder." The company behind the multiplatinum rapper and singer Ashanti announced Wednesday it had changed its name to The Inc., moving away from its previous incarnation as Murder Inc.

"Over the course of the years, it seems as though no one is really looking at the talent ... more so than that damn word `murder,'" label founder Irv Gotti told a midtown Manhattan news conference. "All of these big records, and people would still come back and focus on the negative word `murder.'"

Gotti, flanked by Ja Rule and Ashanti, announced the label's name change at a crowded event attended by hip-hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons and Hip-Hop Summit Action Network head Benjamin Chavis.

The label's name, according to Gotti, came to him as he watched a television documentary on the original crew of mob hit men. He liked the title's double-meaning, referring to both the mob and making hits for the radio.

"I wanted to shock people. I wanted people to remember," said Gotti, who billed Murder Inc. as "the world's most dangerous record company" when it was founded in 1997.

The label's first release under its new name was already in stores: Ashanti's "Christmas Album."

The mellower release was not a signal that the label intended to change its music or its message.

"The lyrical content is going to stay the same," Gotti said. "I don't tell my artists to do anything. They have lyrical freedom, 100 percent. They say what they want."

Gotti, whose real name is Irv Lorenzo, said he had no intention of changing the nickname he shares with the late Gambino family boss John Gotti. Rapper Jay-Z first began calling him "Gotti."

"It's just a nickname, like any other nickname," he said. "I ain't going to change it."