It was announced last week that 50 Cent would be taking his talents and his G-Unit imprint from Interscope to indie Caroline distribution. The split between Fif and Interscope was amicable according to 50. The new deal would allow 50 to distribute his 5th studio album on his own without having to go through the Interscope channels.
But where does 50 even fit in today’s music landscape. Since his investment in Vitamin Water turned him in a multi-millionaire, Fif has been more businessman than rapper. We’d see him pushing something like his new headphones before we would hear him say he has new music coming. Steve Stoute pointed out that 50 was no longer relevant in hip-hop and he was right. 50 Cent might not be relevant to the hip-hop world that we know right now.
It’s been a longtime since the whole world was singing “In the Club.” 50 is no longer seen as a multi-platinum artist and go-to guy for a hit record. Fif hasn’t seen that success in music in sometime now. His last two mixtapes came and went without much fanfare and his label, G-Unit seems to be a ferris wheel of talent with a new name coming around every few minutes. Yes, as we speak, 50 cent is an afterthought in the hip-hop word right now.
So what can 50 do to regain the stronghold on the music industry that he once had? Djsdoingwork.com can think of 5 things he might want to do right now to get his fans back
5. Play nice bruh
Going all the way back to his “How to Rob” days, we’ve all known that 50 knows how to make enemies. He has a penchant for calling out whoever is hot at the moment and making them stoop to his level. In a short span of time, he destroyed the career of Ja Rule, took half of the NYC rap scene to war, developed an on-again off again relationship with Diddy, challenged Kanye West, and made enemies with Rick Ross. That’s a lot to do in a short time. All that rap beef made it hard for fans to look at him for anything other than a bully. You never knew who he wasn’t going to like. It came to the point where if you said that you were a fan of his then you must be a hater of sorts as well.
Fif is going to need to make amends with some of the acts that he dissed in the past. Showing the world that this new 50 cent is going to be one that reaches out to fellow rappers rather than trying to tear them down bar by bar would go far as getting him back in hip-hop’s good graces. He’s made baby steps in that process last year when he teamed up with Fat Joe for a track that would be featured on Dj Kay Slay’s project. More of that and less calling out rappers on Boo-Boo TV will do wonders for him.
4. Go back to square 1.
Some people are good alone, some are better with a team. 50 was great on his own. With his G-Unit brethren, he was unstoppable.
When 50 hit us with 50 Is the Future, we weren’t just introduced to 50 cent. We met his counterparts, fellow Jamaica Queens natives Lloyd Banks and Tony Yayo. The three would go on to make great music and give new school fans the closet glimpse they would get to seeing N.W.A. in the flesh.
50 got larger and G-Unit became a real label. As all that growth happened, Banks and Yayo were pushed to the back. Yayo would drop a few mixtapes here and there and Banks managed to build a decent solo career for himself. Neither reached the same fame that they had when they were still a group.
Meanwhile, the label that 50 was building would grow into a roster that would include the likes of Mobb Deep, M.O.P, Olivia and more. The problem became that the label got to big and diverse at one time. All those talents fighting for attention was a recipe for disaster. Outside of Mobb Deep, none of the artists who were signed to G-Unit ever put out an album. To this day, 50 has been inserting rapper after rapper onto G-Unit in an attempt to make the label hot again and show that he can find new talent. None of that has panned out.
What Fif might want to do is get back with his original brothers, Banks and Yayo and try to get back that original IDGAF aura that he had when the three were flooding the streets with mixtapes. 50 is missing direction and linking with the two people who held him down when he had 9 bullets in him would be a great start.
3. Apologies are in order
Once upon a time, there was a rapper named Ja Rule. Rule would become the biggest star in the hip-hop universe at one-point. His sing-song flow helped him connect with the hood and the radio. It seemed like he could do no wrong. That was until he ran into 50 Cent. The Queens neighbors would spark up a feud that began on the streets of Queens and would spill over into the music industry. This beef would turn 50 into a megastar and turned Ja into a has been.
In the process of taking down Ja Rule, 50 seemed to syphon some off his talent. The machine gun flow that 50 once possessed was replaced by a sing-song pattern that mimicked Ja in many ways. You could almost hear Ja’s style in songs like “In The Club.” 50 has never acknowledged that while he was beating up on Ja Rule for becoming a rap-crooner, he was becoming a very succesful one himself.
The say karma is a bitch, and maybe 50 has built up some bad karma thanks to how he handled Ja. A public apology to Ja would make 50 look like the bigger man. Taking to the radio and speaking about his past beef with Ja and leaving a door open for a full resolution between the two would be a huge image boost for a man who people seem to only equate with beef and drama.
2. Find yourself
Who is 50 Cent right now? We know that he’s the gangster rapper that infiltrated the mainstream and forced us all to yell, “G-G-G-G-G-unit!” Who is 50 Cent right now? Being behind the scenes for the last few years, we rarely got a chance to hear anything new from 50 cent. If he were to drop a new album right now, what would it sound like? I wonder if he thinks the same thing?
Last year alone, we saw J.Cole. Jay Z and Kanye West release new albums and introduce new marketing methods as well for how you sell albums. Watching all this change in the game, has 50 prepared himself for this new environment that he’s going to subject himself to? Fans today are more fickle than ever. Their attention spans come and go with whoever is hot at the time. Fifty needs to take sometime and observe the new world that he’s apart of now and see not only where he can fit in, but how he can stand out.
1. Scratch all that
Forget all that! 50 cent became 50 cent, by being 5o Cent. He never cared much for how people looked at him as a person or an artist. He never complained about not being named the best rapper in hip-hop, he never tried to be a fan favorite with the media. His music was a cross-over success because they just did, not because he made them that way. His formula was, “do what the fuck I want to,” and it worked over and over again. He’s been cold for a while now, but if anyone can thaw out and heat up the rest of the game its Curtis Jackson.
If you’re a betting person, then your money should be on 50 right now. The best think for this self-made man to do will be to remake himself into something new by giving us that old thing back. That 50 Cent would be enough to bring people back to the light.
