With his Animal Ambition set for release next week, 50 Cent stopped by The Breakfast Club yesterday for a final leg of promotion.
Speaking with the Power 105.1 show, 50 detailed his plans for his independent label following his next two albums.
“I’m getting ready to concentrate—following the release of Street King Immortal—I’ll just be focusing on bringing new artists in so I can work on their music behind the scenes,” he said. “I want to build something that’s special. I think I can actually turn my company into a major record company.”
Asked if the major label prototype is outdated in the current landscape, 50 alluded that despite some changes, it’s still a viable business model.
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“It’s not the same return, but it’ll be major record company influence,” he said. “We all would just have a major record company as far as them utilizing the influence to create what Beats is. So you make $3 billion. What they did was take the resources and energy that was connected to Interscope Records and they just put it behind the brand. It grew. When did Beats start?”
50 Cent Says Troy Ave Sounds “So Much” Like Him
Describing his view of Troy Ave, 50 Cent hinted that he turned down signing the rapper after feeling like his style was too similar to his own.
“He’s so new,” he said. “Every time I hear a record I hear part of my old stuff. It’s obvious I’m a huge influence on actual his career…My problem with it when I heard it was so much me. It’s gon’ take time for him to turn into Troy. I have an influence too, I listen to music. It was so important that you had your own style, that I didn’t follow anything that was there. I listened, I appreciated different things from different artists. Like KRS was one of my favorites in the beginning. The aggression in ‘Bridge Is Over,’ you see where that falls into some of the content and material that I created. But, it doesn’t sound like KRS-One. It’s still 50 Cent being 50 Cent.
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“When you get past that little hurdle,” he added. “I know in his mind it’s having a New York sound. It’s cool. I’ve seen guys come and be like Biggie Smalls. Guerilla Black. Guerilla Black was one of the one’s that I looked at and I was like, ‘Yo, maybe he sounds like that ‘cause even when talks he sounds like Biggie to me at different points.’ With Shyne, he was doing that voice. ‘Cause he’s not big. You would get that from Guerilla Black and from B.I.G. just from being bigger guys. There was a few Jay Zs that came through. Guys that rapped just like Jay Z.”
50 Cent Discusses Sales Projections For Animal Ambition
During the interview, 50 also spoke about his sales expectations for Animal Ambition,which is available as a stream on HipHopDX now.
“I can’t do good,” he said. “In my head, what good is because of the success I’ve had in the past, that’s so much lower. I’ve done so much that having the music that makes people enjoy themselves, that actually means something at the moment is the goal. Like when you said, ‘Do you care whether you sell the record or not?’ I do care that it actually is within our culture. That it means something.”
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Responding to a comment about his pushing the place of record sales into the public arena, 50 explained feeling like his career’s sales were unprecedented.
“I was doing so much,” he said. “It’s all more than I thought. I didn’t know that. You had to die, you gotta have a double CD, you gotta be Tupac and get killed to do ten million records. All Eyez On Me, that was the only time I ever saw it before. When it goes past ten to thirteen I was like, ‘What?'”
