Always On Time by Ja Rule (featuring Ashanti)

Album: Pain is Love (2001)

Charted: 6 1

License This Song

lyrics

Songfacts®:

This tale of relationship trials and tribulations was the first hit that the then little-known Ashanti was involved with. Ja Rule had originally planned to record this as a solo song, before Murder Inc boss Irv Gotti persuaded him to collaborate with Ashanti.
This became Def Jam's top selling single.
"If you listen to the track, it had these chords that just punch you right in the face," says Ja Rule, who handpicked the tune from five instrumental tracks written by producer 7 Aurelius. Irv Gotti didn't like it, but Ja didn't have time to argue, as the track was on its way out to Brandy.
With Pain Is Love being his third album, Ja Rule was under pressure to use a big-name artist for the single, but he had other ideas. "I wanted this to be fresh and new," he told Billboard magazine, "and Ashanti was fresh and new." The success of the duet launched Ashanti's solo career through Murder Inc, starting with the smash it "Foolish."
Ashanti's first public performance was singing this with Ja Rule on Saturday Night Live.
This is the second hit duet of the year for Ja Rule, who also landed a #1 with Jennifer Lopez for "I'm Real" (and again for "Ain't It Funny" that summer). Says the rapper: "I feel I took the hip-hop duet somewhere else. It was always an R&B and rap fusion. It was the rapper doing a 16-bar verse on an R&B record or maybe an R&B person singing the chorus. I do a little harmonizing when I rap, so I took it a little further. Ashanti is on the record just as much as I am."

Comments: 1

Ira Thomas Harris from Rural Franklin County NcAlways On Time cords still hits you in the face twenty years later! If Always On Time was rereleased now some twenty years later with all the new Media Social Media and Streaming Services this song pair with Ja Rule's current current audience and new audience Always On Time would be two three or four times bigger a hit than original version!!!!

see more comments

More Songfacts:

We Are The WorldUSA for Africa

The actor Dan Aykroyd sang on "We Are The World." LaToya Jackson did too, so we know they weren't all that picky.

Red Red WineUB40

UB40's cover of Neil Diamond's "Red Red Wine" was a minor hit when first released in 1983, but it went to #1 five years later when radio stations in Phoenix started playing it.

Invisible TouchGenesis

The Genesis song "Invisible Touch" was inspired by the Prince-written Sheila E. track "The Glamorous Life."

FootlooseKenny Loggins

The names Louise, Jack, Marie and Milo all show up in the song "Footloose." Marie was the mother of Dean Pitchford, who co-wrote it.

You Get What You GiveThe New Radicals

"You Get What You Give" by The New Radicals was the first hit song to use the word "frenemies" in the lyrics.

The Right ProfileThe Clash

After a devastating car accident, the actor Montgomery Clift had to be filmed from "The Right Profile" to look good - that provided the name of The Clash song.