50 CENT:No Mercy, No Fear

[Myrealname]

AHH: Snoop’s been going after Suge really heavily lately. Xzibit’s been falling back a little bit, it seems. I know that you had talked about going to The Row. Do you think you might inherit some of that beef that Dre and Em have with Suge?

50 Cent: Not even a little bit. You know what I think? I think – it doesn’t even matter to me. No beef, that don’t even matter to me like…You know what matters to me. I got a little boy and he’s 5 years old. My life insurance policy is worth a lot. So if anything happens to me, he will be well taken care of. I got my back to the wind. I don’t care who got beef with who. Whatever. You can’t stop it. If its gonna happen, its gonna happen and I’m like whatever. Is it something new? When you halfway kill somebody it hurts. If you gangsta, you kill ‘em and the problems over with. That the way I view things.

AHH: What up with G-Unit? I hear its you starting your own gang.

50 Cent: G-Unit is like Tony Yayo and Lloyd Banks – 50 Cent. We got a new female artist. I think when people say G-Unit, they think gang just like when Snoop said Dogg Pound Gang, but G-Unit is a company. G-Unit is a brand name. Tony Yayo and Lloyd Banks are going to be great solo artists. We collaborate in G-Unit as a group. Its sort like Wu-Tang with not as many people.

AHH: Do you have a label situation with them yet?

50 Cent: The situation is lovely right now. A few people are interested right now.

AHH: How’s that feel…At one time, not tool long ago, you were blackballed.

50 Cent: You know what that I? People become afraid to do business with you like “he is what he is rapping about.” I don’t make friends when I am doing business, because if I make you a friend, I have to accept your defects. If you my friend, you can come to me and say, “Yo, I messed up” and this is your friend you are looking at [but] are you going to let it go? [I’m gonna say,] “I’m glad that you are man enough to tell me you messed up, but you’re fired.”

AHH: So your relationship with Eminem is just business?

50 Cent: Yeah. I think that a lot of people’s perception of me is that I’m crazy. Its understandable because I’m not gonna change. I am who am. The things you go through makes you who you are. This is a product of Southside, Jamaica Queens and if music didn’t work, I’d be back in that environment doing things that you hear me talk about. When people are afraid, I like that they take caution. When they would tell you maybe, they tell me “Sorry 50, I don’t think that we can make this happen.” I’d rather not deal with the bullsh*t.

AHH: What can people expect to hear from the album?

50 Cent: Whatever you heard on the streets, those are the weaker records. When I get tired of records, I put them out. I have stuff lined up for the album and when it starts getting old, I’m like “Let me put this one out and get on something new.” It gets dated to me. I put it out and its brand new to them and they embrace it. My new music is four times better than what they hear on the street.

AHH: How many tracks did Dre do?

50 Cent: I can’t tell you how many he did on the album, but I can tell you we did 12 records. We picked 16 records we wanted to put on the album, me and him did 12 records, me and Em did four. The production varies on the album.

AHH: What about this movie stuff I’ve been hearing about?

50 Cent: My opportunities are opening up. I’m with it. I got some different things. I don’t want to jinx myself before it actually goes down.

AHH: What kind of roles do you think you want to try out?

50 Cent: I like action flicks.

AHH: I could see you on “The Wire,” the show on HBO.

50 Cent: I like that joint. I used to be an “Oz” fan until Adebisi died now I’m like “The Wire” is what’s up.

AHH: Anything else we can expect from you?

50 Cent: Don’t expect to see me not in the street. You gonna always be able to see 50 Cent on a mixtape. You know how artists, when they get established a lil’ bit, you don’t hear from them anymore. The mixtape, that’s entry level hip-hop-. They testing their records to see how people respond.

AHH: Do you make money off them mixtapes?

50 Cent: I don’t make any money off of them. its promotional purposes. I get the response. I just fall back and see how they feel about the records and I know which way to go. I’m experimenting with the music at that point and G-Unit too. Normally, you would have to go through a million freestyles and they are probably past the rapper that has done a million freestyles just based on their placement [with me].

AHH: Why do you think people are fascinated with you even though they don’t know who you are.

50 Cent: I’m from the street. I’m big from where I’m from. And when I am in the hood, I’m big in the hood so its like, it feels good there. Say you live in Brooklyn and nobody likes your music where you are from, you can make money off it in the UK or Japan, but if nobody likes your music in Brooklyn you are still going to want then to like it. It bothers a lot of people that my music impacts so hard on the street. I think that they would like it to – its obvious – their names are “We’re the Killers.” When your record is a pop record and nobody cares about your record in the hood, they feel envy because you can’t sell records the way I sell records.

Like my first album – I’m really not a really a Power Of The Dollar {his first CD] fan. I made it, I was being creative at that point. We had a little bit of everything, you know? And this album, Get Rich Or Die Trying, is more 50 Cent. When I first decided I am going to rap and do my thing, I said I am going to grow rich or die trying.

AHH: So before you were trying to satisfy the label?

50 Cent: Not really satisfy the label. It was really just being creative. Like, it didn’t have a direction. I didn’t know what I wanted so I was trying to do everything.


(ahh)