Ja Rule will return to court today (February 9) to officially be sentenced in his gun possession case. The New York rapper reached a plea deal with prosecutors in December of last year and pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of criminal possession of a weapon. In connection with that deal, he is expected to receive a two year sentence and learn when he must surrender himself over to authorities.

When the details of his deal were leaked online, Ja Rule addressed it via his official Twitter account and said that he plans on releasing an album, which will be titled The Renaissance Project, before he goes to jail. The project was initially titled Venni Vetti Vecci 2010 but during an interview with MTV, he explained that that title no longer fit because he is in a different place in his life now.

“I changed the name of my album from Venni Vetti Vecci 2010, first off all, Venni Vetti Vecci was my baby; that was my first album. You can never duplicate that era in time.  That was my whole life’s work in that album up until that time,”

explained Ja.

“[Now,] I’m on my own venture, so it was a sign of a new beginning, new ambitions, new everything.  They built this statue [in Africa], it’s called The Renaissance, and it’s a statue of a man holding his baby on his shoulders with his wife in his arms, pointing to the heavens. To me, it just symbolized what I’m about right now and just the word — fresh start, I said that’s what I want to call my project, The Renaissance Project and it represents what I’m about.”