HHDX: Why?
50 Cent: …Because I’m talking about him. The fact that he said something on the air, that ain’t beef, son! If it had some substance for it to turn into something, it would’ve already been like that. It would’ve been on some street shit. I said it in an actual interview that he thinks that he could fuck with me. He was making comparisons about Jim’s sales versus Lloyd Banks’… but its 50 Cent and Cam’ron on the phone [laughs]. I sold 8 million records, B! Don’t talk to me about them dudes while it’s you and me talking on the air! What I’ve done to the general public, outside of Tupac, is become a believable individual. I’ve given them a more vivid description of my lifestyle than a lot of cats in the game. I felt like that with Tupac. That’s the only comparison. I don’t got any “Thug Life” comparisons. We weren’t similar in that regards. But people understand what I’m talking about. When I go on TV, radio, anywhere… the ratings go up.

HHDX: With rap music and the industry both musically and business-wise not up to par, you and Kanye have albums that are anticipated, yet are dropping on the same day. How do you think that this affect the culture and the business of hip-hop as a whole?
50 Cent: I think that it’s good for hip-hop music, period. Kanye is a great producer. So, we’re going to see what’s going to happen. I actually went to see him while I was making this album to see if he had something that’d change my perception of my own project. We’ve worked together on this album. The ill part of it is where I don’t like it where they try to make it seem like a competition. I don’t think it’d affect sales, but it’d be the marketing that gets affected. The idea of making him my competition doesn’t make sense because I’ve sold three times the amount of what he’s sold. That means any rapper can come out and say that they’re competing with me. What’s going to happen afterwards? You know what…?

HHDX: What’s that?
50 Cent: I just came up with an idea, man… Let’s see who gets trophies for having the best record. My first album sold 872,000 and then 822,000 the next week! Usually, there is a 40-50% decrease in an album’s sales. Mines had a 70% increase. Check this out, when the second album came out, I sold 1.14 in four days! I accomplished a feat of bringing back my core base of fans and increasing upon that market. As we go into this third record, "I Get Money" is growing. I don’t know if it’ll be peaking at the time the album drops, but I also have the joint with Justin Timberlake. What people don’t realize is that we’re in the business of selling music, but it’s also about creating public interest. If the record doesn’t sell at all, if I sold 200,000 copies, then you can say that my run is over… Continued on page 5 »