“Ain’t It Funny” by Jennifer Lopez featuring Ja Rule and Caddillac Tah

song info

    “Ain’t It Funny” by Jennifer Lopez featuring Ja Rule and Caddillac Tah (official video) is a hip hop pop song.

link to the static song information page for this song:
http://www.thissideofsanity.com/music/songs/ai/aintitfunny.php

    Summary quotation from Wikipedia:

    “Ain’t It Funny (Murder Remix)” is a song recorded by American entertainer Jennifer Lopez. It was co-written by Lopez and Cory Rooney for the Adam Shankman-directed romantic comedy The Wedding Planner (2001). Shankman, however, felt that the song had too much of a Latin-influence to be featured in the film and it was instead included on Lopez’s second studio album J.Lo (2001). “Ain’t It Funny” was released as the third single from the album on June 20, 2001 by Epic Records. The song features additional vocals from Ja Rule (Jeffery Atkins) and Cadillac Tah. It was written by Lopez, Atkins, Tah, Cory Rooney, Irving Lorenzo, and Ashanti Douglas. Over a reworking of the beat to Craig Mack’s “Flava in Ya Ear”, Lopez sings about “dropping a boyfriend who keeps messing up”.

Background

    While watching a rough cut of The Wedding Planner (2001) in Canada, Jennifer Lopez and Cory Rooney brainstormed ideas for its accompanying soundtrack. The two “pulled different thoughts and feelings” from the film’s scenes. The scene where Lopez’s character is in the backseat of a car listening to Matthew McConaughey and Bridgette Wilson’s characters talk about the wedding made Rooney think of the line “ain’t it funny how some feelings you just can’t deny and you can’t move on even though you try”. According to Rooney, “all those words and melodies just started coming” to him while watching the scene. After he conceived the idea for “Ain’t It Funny”, Rooney returned to his home and “roughed out the track” and came up with the song’s chorus. He then worked with Lopez for an hour to complete the song. Tommy Mottola was so enthusiastic about the song that he contributed to its melody. Adam Shankman, however, felt that “Ain’t It Funny” had too much of a Latin influence for the film, due to its usage of timbales. Lopez disagreed with Shankman and the two later agreed to use “Love Don’t Cost a Thing” in the film.

    In July 2001, Lopez’s number one album J.Lo (2001) was reissued with a murder remix of one of its original singles, “I’m Real”. The R&B murder remix of “I’m Real” was written by Ja Rule, who also features on the track. According to Rule, he initially was “just f[uck]ing around” with the track after Lopez’s team gave it to him to remix, but it turned out to be “a hell of a record”. The remix was successful, topping the Billboard Hot 100 chart for several weeks. It also helped J.Lo to return to the top ten of the US Billboard 200 album chart. The remix allowed Lopez to crossover from Pop to R&B. Rule said this put her in “another zone” and her fans aren’t “gonna want the pop version of J. Lo no more, they gonna want the ‘I’m Real’ version”. The rapper enjoyed working with Lopez and called it a “real collaboration” because he actually worked with her in the studio. The success of “I’m Real (Murder Remix)” lead him to begin working on a remix for “Ain’t it Funny” the following August, which would later be announced as the lead single to J.Lo’s remix album, J to tha L–O! The Remixes, in December 2001.

Writing and production

    Rooney explained: “We had changed the sound of Jennifer Lopez [with “I’m Real”] and we didn’t have anything else on the [J.Lo] album we could release as a single. We had to do another remix to keep the momentum going”. Then-upcoming artist Ashanti dropped by Irv Gotti’s studio in New York. She recalled: “Everyone was there and Ja [Rule] was on the floor playing video games, and they had the beat playing in the background. Chris Gotti, Irv Gotti’s brother, said ‘Ja’s supposed to be writing this record for J-Lo, but it doesn’t look like he’s going to be doing anything tonight. Why don’t you go in there and see what’s happening?’ So that’s exactly what I did.” Ashanti wrote two verses and recorded a demo for the new version of “Ain’t It Funny” for Lopez. Gotti and 7 flew out to Los Angeles on September 10, 2001 to record the song with Lopez. The song was due to be recorded the following day, but was postponed due to the September 11 attacks. When work resumed on the song, Gotti called Ashanti from Los Angeles asking her to write another verse for the song. She recalled: “I had to write it over the phone and two-way Irv the lyrics.”

Original version

    “Ain’t It Funny” is Latin pop song, with a duration of four minutes and six seconds (4:06). The song contains a Mecca disco beat and a “bullfight trumpet”, as well as a “solid dancefloor thump”. Lyrically, Lopez sings about “creating the perfect romance in your mind, then facing reality when Mr. Right is less than ideal”. Josh Freedom du Lac of Wall of Sound wrote that “Ain’t It Funny” steals its melody “wholesale” from Madonna’s “La Isla Bonita”, although it has a better rhythmic base. He concluded that it still “sort of runs in place, as though Lopez recorded it while standing on a treadmill”. Sal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine responded positively to the song, calling it “terribly infectious”. He, however, criticized the “overpowering choir of back-up vocalists” that sing the chorus. Jake Barnes of Dot Music called the song bland, writing that Lopez should “check out” Jill Scott’s 2000 song “One Is the Magic Number” for how Latin pop “should be done properly”.

    While reviewing the original “Ain’t It Funny”, Billboard’s Chuck Taylor praised the song’s production as “Grade A” and its lyrics as “smart” and said of the remix release, “Sony has got to be kidding, calling it “Ain’t it Funny” when not one note of it is held in common with the original. It’s a disturbing trend, but one that will surely push J.Lo to a new high”.

Composition

    “Ain’t it Funny (Murder Remix)” is a Hip Hop song with a duration of three minutes and forty-nine seconds (3:49). It contains no similarities to the original track. While he was working towards the remix, Ja Rule boasted “I’m about to fuck ya’ll up”, stating that the song’s sampling of Craig Mack’s “Flava In Ya Ear” would be “remixed” and “vamped up crazy”. He said “It’s totally not J. Lo”. Over the reworking of the “Flava In Ya Ear” beat, Lopez sings about “a boyfriend who keeps messing up”, while Rule and Cadillac Tah “drop rhymes” on the track. Rule raps that he’s “Off the wall like MJ in his early days”, which is a reference to Michael Jackson’s album Off the Wall (1979). The rapper also says “Oh I, never been a sucker for chocha”, choca meaning pussy, the slang term for vagina. He continues on to say that people “want” him after they see him “workin’ with money”, meaning working with Lopez.

Music video

    The single’s official music video was directed by Herb Ritts.

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