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50 Cent and Kanye West famously battled it out for the top spot on the Billboard 200 back in September 2007 when his Curtis album faced off against Ye’s Graduation.
Ye comfortably won the contest by a margin of 266k sales, but in a new conversation with Billboard published on Tuesday (October 22), 50 insisted he could have come out on top in the long-run if he was really trying to be the winner.
“We made the highest sales week for Hip Hop culture, doing that and being competitive,” he said. “People that were participating as fans were buying more than one copy of it, because of the competitive side of it. When you look at it… we had to stand together to face off, but we never had an issue.
“That was his ‘break’ album that broke him in. If I was trying to combat that, I would’ve went on tour with him. I would’ve had all of the material with the albums that worked ahead of [Graduation] to draw from, while he had that one record.”
And while that wasn’t a real beef, Drake and Kendrick Lamar‘s back and forth earlier this year very much was – and Fif revealed elsewhere in his convo with Billboard that he offered words of wisdom to the 6 God after he was deemed by many to have lost the battle.
“I was telling him, it’s not him. I’m listening on the outskirts, it’s not you. Don’t let yourself think that for a second,” 50 Cent said. “On some real shit, I said, ‘They said you lost, okay. Well what did you lose?’ What exactly did he lose if he got $300 something million on his last tour? You didn’t lose a motherfucking thing, man.”
Fif also revealed he urged Drake to stay in the studio — advice he appears to have heeded considering he has released a slew of solo material and guest features since his feud with Kendrick cooled off in May, and also has a joint album with PARTYNEXTDOOR on the way.
“If that’s the moment, you keep your creative energy in the right place, and keep creating,” he recalled telling Drake. “If you slow down because you feel, ‘What the fuck?’ The resistance will make you feel like your material isn’t good.
“Then you gotta figure out how to keep pushing, how to keep creating — because that’s what it feels like to you at the moment. That shit was good for Hip Hop. It made both of them create quality material faster.”
