Pop Culture | 00s

You've Been Saying J. Lo's "I'm Real" Intro Wrong All These Years

Alright, so let's take a trip down memory lane to the year 2001.

Times were much simpler back then, but that doesn't mean that it was boring, especially from a pop culture standpoint.

So many things happened that year, including the release of the first Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Dreamworks introduced us to Shrek, Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake were the "It" couple, and most importantly Jennifer Lopez a.k.a. Jenny from the Block a.k.a J.Lo, released her second album titled J.Lo.

Apple.com

The album, which included songs that dealt with themes of love, sex, and empowerment, gave us some of the Latina artists's biggest hits, like "Love Don't Cost A Thing" and "I'm Real."

J.Lo recorded a remix version of "I'm Real" featuring rapper Ja Rule, and it was such a huge it.

Even if you were going through your emo phase, and weren't really into pop and hip-hop, you still couldn't help but bop your head a little whenever this song came on the radio.

latina.com

Today, the song is still just as good, and most of us probably still know every lyric, from beginning to end like it was the summer of '01, or so we thought.

Jezebel published an article a while ago in which the author drew our attention to J.Lo's first line in the song. It turns out, we've all been getting it wrong all these years.

For over 15 years, people have been divided over what J.Lo was saying in her opening line of the song. Some say it sounds like she's asking about a person named Ellie, while others were pretty confident that she is saying "Are you ready?."

If you're among those who can't make up their minds about what she uttered, take a listen below:

First, can I just establish that the Ellie argument makes no sense (sorry, not sorry). I mean, because why would J.Lo ask Ja Rule about a random person who has nothing to do with the song?

Either way, neither "Are you Ellie?" or "Are you ready?" are correct, so let's find out what she's actually saying.

Thanks to Jezebel, we now know that that she actually said "R-U-L-E."

When you really think about it this makes so much more sense, considering Ja Rule had literally just asked her "What's my mother****ing name?"

Glamour

So now the only question that remains is HOW did so many of us get the lyric wrong for so long?