Eminem had to have him, Jay-Z admits he’s the hottest rap act around, the streets love him, and Irv Gotti and Ja Rule are mad as fuck that he’s blowing up. He’s 50 Cent and he doesn’t go looking for trouble, but it always seems to find him.
You probably remember his breakout “fuck everyone” smash, “How To Rob”, but after the Queens native was shot nine out in front of his grandmothers mothers house in 2000, 50 was looked at as too much of a risk and dropped from his Trackmaters/Columbia deal. Damn near everyone had forgotten about the name-calling emcee by the time he resurfaced to set the streets ablaze with his G-Unit: 50 Cent Is The Future mixtape series. 50 re-invented the mixtape freestyle, putting them into song format, allowing him to spread his street gospel even further. And with the help of Sha Money XL, Lloyd Banks, and Tony Yayo, 50 and his G-Unit army caught on like wildfire, no one was safe. The industry that shitted on 50 a few years earlier, was once again at his door. But this time, the tables had turned, the power of the dollar was in 50’s court. Things were definitely looking good, although no one expected for Eminem, who was fresh off of going platinum the first week his Eminem Show was released, to fall in love with 50’s music the instant he heard it.
50 Cent wasn’t full of shit when he claimed to be the future, because he is. But not only is he the future he’s the present. His major label debut, Get Rich or Die Trying is due out this February. Let’s go…
So when did everyone start jumping on your dick, as far as record deals?
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I had a lil’ momentum goin’ ‘cuz I had my attorney Theo setting up meetings. But everyone was kinda afraid at first, for real. I was sitting down with different label heads who had a perception of me that I wasn’t cool to even work with. From that, I made the decision to get Chris Lightly (Violator Management) involved because I needed someone to speak to these labels for me without me being present because they already had a fear for me. Because they figure I’m really from what I say I’m from. If you’re from what you say your doing, in reality you’re a risk. If they give you money and you’re out there and active on the street, your at risk. They prefer you to be fake-ass rapper. I had deals on the table with a few companies. There’s not too many places you can go and win, the game is small. Def Jam was kinda out of the question. I was lookin’ at J Records. Universal’s like a whore house; they got so many successful projects there, how hard would it be to get focused on? I also had Jive Records and Capital. Capital is like a cash out, I don’t even think they’re in a condition to sell records. But they’re offer’s gonna be bigger ‘cuz they know the talent of the artists. So when you meet with them and they give you a big number, you can say (deal-wise) were at this, because an offer has officially been made.
So when did Eminem come into the picture?
Theo Stoudamaire and Paul Rosenberg, which is Em’s attorney/ manager, they know each other. They’ve worked closely before that. Paul gave Em a cd of mine. But he was in the middle of finishing up The Eminem Show, so he didn’t get a chance to get real deep into it. After he completed it, he had a chance to listen to it was like, “I love this guy, I got to do this.” Paul was like, “I think it might be too late, because Theo had told him about the other deals that were on the table.” He was like, “naw, we gotta be able to do it.” They called on a Friday night, I flew out the following day to meet him in Los Angeles on the weekend. I sat with him and he was kinda selling himself to me and I was trippin like, “homie, you just did 1.3 million, let me sell myself to you.” Then he brought Dre in and I met with him the following day and me, Em , and Dre was all on the same page. It was a wrap. When I left it was cool, but the numbers went up dramatically when I got back to the city. Once other labels figured out that Em and Dre were serious and wanted to do the project, numbers went through the roof. It was at 1.6 million with certain companies. I ended up doing the deal for a million dollars but with Eminem and Dr. Dre because creatively there’s no place that I could be and have that.
You have a well-publicized beef with Murder Inc., and in retaliation to the numerous disses they went on Hot 97 in New York and said they had an order of protection you filed against Irv Gotti and his brother, stemming from the stabbing incident with them a while back. Did you really file an order of protection against them?
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These dudes is clowns. Look, they wait seven days before this kid’s (Ja) album comes out, that nobody is talking about, They wanna bring out an “order of protection”. They wanna be street. It’s obvious you would like to be “hood,” or respected in a way as if you’re a gangster when you call yourself a “murderer.” The last thing I would wanna be labeled is a murderer. Anything that I have done in the past that might make a person wanna call me that, or say that it’s possible that I’ve did that, I am blessed not to be in the prison penitentiary for it. So the last thing I would want, is someone running around calling me that. That’s a clown. Your success should exceed me, if you’re supposed to be on top of the game. You’re focusing on an artist that hasn’t been released yet. Because your afraid, why? Because the people that listen to me are the people you wish liked you. You’re a pop star. The ecstasy make you feel like a don, you’s Elton John. He’s a real sweetheart. Ja, n*gga, there never been nothin’ gangsta about him. Irv Gotti’s the same deal. He’s a fat, cupcake eatin’…I just can’t get wit’ him, he ain’t got no history, no background. But you know what, I enjoy the promotions. The more they run around with it, the more I’ma answer the question. And I’ma tell the facts, that it’s not true. It’s like what he says about DMX. I take a look at Ja Rule and can’t see how someone could see him and wanna be like Ja Rule when he doesn’t wanna be Ja Rule. He wants to be DMX or Tupac Shakur. Look at his album inserts, doesn’t that look a little familiar. Look at his crosses on his back. Tupac puts one big one, he puts two little ones. He’s a clown, man. Even his words, and the things that he picks up is a straight-up Tupac record. This n*gga studied the Tupac Shakur book.
Your name was brought up a million times with Jam Master Jay’s death, at one point they made it seem like you were involved with it somehow. Can you clear that up?
It’s hard to not speak about myself without speaking about Jam Master Jay (Jay is responsible for putting 50 on back in the day). I seen Jay two days before he died in Chicago, and he was talking about that he had some film opportunities for me. And then I come back and that happens. It’s crazy because the press thinks to themselves, “how can we sell a newspaper?” So they write whatever they wanna write. Ninety percent of what you read is bullsh*t. And the cops, when a person dies and there’s no answer to why they’re dead, they go, “who’s his friends, who’s his enemies?” And Jay doesn’t have a bad aura around him so there ain’t a whole bunch of enemies that you can pick out. So they look at his friends and they find out one of his friends is 50 Cent, “they say, he’s out there.” If you can’t pick out things that I’ve done, you can pick out things that were done in my vacinity. So they come up with all these theories, like, “someone did this to Jam Master Jay to send 50 Cent a message,” and in the process they damn near tied me into it like I had something to do with it. They don’t give a f*ck. A cop came to me like, “we know for a fact that there’s a hit out on your life.” Tell me something I don’t know. I ain’t never heard of the police trying to de-escalate some sh*t before it goes down. All they do is clean up the mess after it’s done. Not ahead of time.
