Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	59/100
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
The A.V. Club	Unfavorable
Entertainment Weekly	B+
HipHopDX
Los Angeles Times
PopMatters	Mixed
RapReviews	7.5/10
Rolling Stone

Pain Is Love is the third studio album by American rapper Ja Rule. Produced by Irv Gotti, it was released on October 2, 2001, by Def Jam and Murder Inc Records. The album received a mixed reception from critics. Pain Is Love debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and was supported by three singles: "Livin' It Up", "Always on Time", and "Down Ass Bitch". It was certified triple-platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for selling over 3,000,000 copies. The sequel of the album, titled Pain Is Love 2 (2012).

Pain is Love received generally mixed reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 59, based on 10 reviews.

AllMusic's Jason Birchmeier praised the album for fine-tuning the formula set by Rule 3:36 of having R&B crossover singles and hardcore rap tracks to balance out the whole record. An editor from HipHopDX said that hardcore tracks like "Dial M for Murder" and "Worldwide Gangsta" felt like forced attempts to bring back Ja's thug persona, but praised the album for having tracks that contain ear-grabbing lines and good beats, saying that "Pain Is Love is another positive establishment that will indeed create more popularity and more fan acknowledgement for Ja Rule." Steve 'Flash' Juon of RapReviews found Ja's singing voice on some tracks intolerable but gave the album credit for containing tracks that display Irv Gotti's producing talents and Ja's adequate lyricism, concluding that, "Ja Rule will live up to the latter half of his name and dominate the charts for the latter half of 2001 with an album that is undoubtedly his most solid release to date."

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Wikipedia