When Ja Rule was just 9 years old, his estranged father, William, took him out for pizza. While they were settling down to eat, a man reached over the plate of young Ja — then known by his birth name, Jeffrey Atkins — and it enraged William so much that he served up a beating to the guy. It was just one of the seeds that would later grow into an unpleasant branch of Ja’s life.
“My mom always used to say, ‘You’re just like your father,’” Ja Rule tells The Post. “I never knew what she meant, but now I do.”
In his new book, “Unruly: The Highs and Lows of Becoming a Man,” out Tuesday, Ja rarely pretends to be anything other than a product of his often hostile environment.
Aside from his father’s temper, Ja saw plenty of violence on the streets of Hollis, Queens, where he grew up. In his teen years, he dabbled in burglary and dealt drugs to earn money.
Eventually, he managed to escape from the struggles of Hollis through music. Ja first came to prominence by guesting on Jay Z’s 1998 single “Can I Get A…”
But the rough-hewn street rhymes of his own 1999 debut album, “Venni Vetti Vecci,” helped establish him as a name in his own right.
He had further success on the Billboard Hot 100 with singles such as the Ashanti duet “Always on Time,” which hit No. 1 in 2001.
Even with the world at his feet, Ja carried his penchant for violence into his adult life.
Examples pepper the memoir, including the time he brutally assaulted his touring DJ with a baseball bat when he discovered the DJ had stolen Ja’s wife’s credit card.
“I’m a generous guy and I treat everyone the same,” he explains. “But when a person does something to abuse that, it crushes me and it brings out the rage in me.”
That was nothing compared to the red mist that used to fall when Ja was confronted by fellow New Yorker 50 Cent. The two famously had a long-running feud that began at the end of the 1990s, when Fiddy was an unknown.
In “Unruly,” Ja complains his nemesis was continually talking up quarrels and his tough street credentials just to make a name for himself.
It came to a dramatic head one night in 2000, when both were at the Hit Factory studio, then located on 54th Street.
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An altercation resulted in rapper Black Child — another artist on Ja’s label Murder Inc. — stabbing 50 Cent (a relatively minor wound that required three stitches).
Now 38, Ja insists the beef is old news and both know how to handle themselves. “I saw Fiddy on a plane recently. I just said ‘Wassup’ and went to sleep. It wouldn’t have been like that a few years ago!”
Ja Rule is making strides to change, primarily due to his time in jail between 2011 and 2013 on gun and tax-evasion charges.
While serving his two-year sentence, fame helped him curry favor with correctional officers, and he developed a taste for art thanks to his friendship with fellow inmate, art dealer Larry Salander.
Still, it was not an easy time. “It was really the small things I missed most,” he says. “Being with my kids [he has a daughter and two sons], real toothpaste and real toilet paper.”
Even while he was in prison, Ja still made headlines. In late 2013, Internet rumors suggested the rapper had left his wife Aisha for his cellmate. The stories were almost immediately debunked, but Ja still felt obliged to deny them.
Now, he’s able to afford a chuckle at it all: “People will say ‘How’s you cellmate doing?’ and I’ll say, ‘Bubba’s good, I’ll tell him you were asking about him!’”
With his life back on track, Ja now wants to resurrect his career. An album, “Genius Loves Company,” is due next year, and a reality series, “Follow the Rules,” is in the works. “It’ll be a chance for people to see me as a father and a husband,” he says. “I want people to know this aspect of my life too.”