Vibe: A lot of labels were built around one figure or a core group of artists. G-Unit was around you, Cash Money around Hot Boys, No Limit around Master P. Do you feel there's an expiration date on labels built around one act?
50 Cent: I don't believe that. You call it an "expiration date," I'll call it a change. Things absolutely have to change. Nothing stays the same. If you don't get wiser, you just get older and more foolish. Look at Lil Wayne. His success is the reflection of a dad's love for his son. When you make it to album six and there's still marketing dollars around for you, it's because your dad loves his son. Before that point, they would have done been rid of him. Album six and you still ain't turned over no big profits? You're done. The business would have disposed of him before he made it to album six. Don't think this shit is organic. This is business. Sure, your body of work is there and you can get busy, but you mean to tell me that nobody gives a fuck for six albums? It's marketing dollars, and the company decided he was the best possible thing to go after. But you gotta stick around longer, you gotta survive that.
Vibe: But you can't discount mixtape buzz--
50 Cent: M.O.P. has mixtape buzz, but that doesn't mean they're ever going to sell records.
Vibe: But I mean buzz like you had, Wayne had.
50 Cent: That's not the same thing when you're on album six. Until you get the first available opportunity to be marketed, and you record goes "kaboom," and you sell 12 million fucking records because your shit was right--there's a very big difference from being on album six and having mixtapes. Wayne, he has more efforts than I have. He ain't no new artist. You can't look at him like a new guy. Even the Drake kid. That is marketing. The company is getting your record played. You're saying "I did all of this without a record deal," but the record company was marketing your fucking record.
Vibe: What do you think of the new generation of rappers, like Drake or Kid Cudi?
50 Cent: I think they've always been here. They were Q-Tip, they were Common Sense, Mos Def, Talib [Kweli]. They were smarter--these new guys are just hipsters. They got a coolness to them and a look. But back then, Common and them were saying something that was socially responsible. It was just smarter. I listened to them. I'm a fan. The perspective that I was actually seeing things from and was subjected to because of my living conditions made me a bigger fan of KRS-One Criminal Minded, [The Notorious B.I.G.'s] Ready to Die, those other things that had the aggression necessary to get by in my environment. It led me in that direction as an artist.
0 comments:
Post a Comment