NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) – Platinum-selling rapper Ja Rule has been moved from an upstate prison to a Brooklyn jail ahead of his July release date, federal authorities announced on Thursday.

The 36-year-old rapper, whose real name is Jeffrey Atkins, left a state prison in central New York last week after serving most of his two-year sentence for illegal gun possession and went straight into federal custody in a tax evasion case.

Ja Rule is now being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn and, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, is expected to be released on July 28.

Ja Rule pleaded guilty in June of 2011 after police said they found a loaded .40-caliber semiautomatic gun in a rear door of his $250,000-plus Maybach sports car, which they’d said they’d stopped for speeding as he left a star-studded concert at Manhattan’s Beacon Theatre on July 22, 2007.

The rapper admitted failing to pay taxes on more than $3 million earned between 2004 and 2006.

Ja Rule emerged as a hardcore rapper in the late 1990s but then became known for his collaborations with female pop singers, including Jennifer Lopez and Ashanti. He scored a best rap album Grammy Award nomination in 2002 with “Pain Is Love.” He also has appeared in movies, including the 2001 film “The Fast and the Furious” and 2003′s “Scary Movie 3.”

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