Rebuilding the empire...

By now we've all heard the story of how initially Reasonable Doubt was to be Jay Z's sole endeavor into the hip hop game. And if you claim to know anything about hip hop, then you know that Jay didn't end his career with that unrivaled classic. The following year he released In My Lifetime Vol. 1 and the luster of his debut quickly wore off. If you travel to '98, you'll hear a young vicious Memphis Bleek rapping the opening bars to Hov's third set In My Lifetime Vol. 2. It was Bleek who was supposed to be groomed to take over the Rocafella throne after Jay stepped down. Unfortunately for Bleek, the odd coupling of orphan Annie and Jay birthed "Hard Knock Life" and Hov brought the hood to the suburbs. Five years and five platinum albums later, Jay left the game and headed to the corporate offices over at Def Jam. Without getting into all the details, Dame, Biggs and Jay split. So once Jay "retired", the label that once housed street credible artists Bleek, Sigel, State Property, Cam'ron and M.O.P fell apart. Now the dilapidated roster consists of only one "successful" artist, Kanye West. Kanye never fit into the Rocafella stable of artists but he has been the most successful other than Hov himself. Now it appears that Hov may have found the savior for Rocafella, in newcomer Tru Life. Tru is most notable for his appearance on a street DVD in which he talks candidly about robbing Mobb Deep. He's been generating a buzz for a while now on the mixtape circuit and now it looks like '07 may be his coming out party (no homo). Amidst all the Diplomat v. Jay drama, Tru stepped out on the front line earlier last week with his new mixtape Tru York. The cover to the mixtape features Jim Jones and Cam dressed like Borat and LaWanda from In Living Color. Tru takes shots at the tight jean Dipset Crew and even has Hov talking greasy on the intro as well. Personally, from a hip hop standpoint I'm impressed with what I have heard so far. But knowing Rocafella's history of sitting on projects for way too long, who knows if Tru will ever release anything. Head over real talk to check out the interview with Tru Life.