50 Cent has been in the game long enough now that he's definitely seen some changes in hip-hop. Fif manages to keep up with times, putting on new material quite often and broadening his reach with various business ventures. In a new interview with Complex, Fif speaks on how hip-hop is different than it was, and if it's a bad or good thing.
50 explained to Complex how the recording process has changed, with producers handing rappers completely finished products. "Yeah. You got a lot of guys that make records and everything’s done for you before you get there. The producer actually made the record. It has a sample playing and a chorus, you did your verse, you have three other rappers that generate interest from different demographics rap behind you and it’s done. Those records, they’re good too because sometimes those are the things that you don’t have to think about. You hear it, you go, "Okay, I know what it is," and you just party to it. There’s no substance to it that makes you stop and think."
The G-Unit rapper also spoke on the whether or not the game changing is bad thing. 50 explains in some ways it is negative, citing a loss of realness,"Well, it can be considered negative if you’re not willing to make the adjustments, but it has changed. We’re following trends a lot more than we used to. We used to allow someone entry into the actual culture, and it would be theirs. Authenticity meant a lot. For you to offer something from your perspective or from your experience that someone else couldn’t do because they haven’t had that happen in their lives, that’s gone. Now it’s like, that guy will write my song. I’ll write the record from that guy or for something else. Like, you have to watch it. They say, "Let’s make the hit record that they want to hear." It doesn’t even matter if it’s coming from a real place."
50 Cent also explains how social networking plays a part, "If you just use social networking as an example, a Twitter, the negative things that people will say randomly, if you took those things it would probably break you down to the point where you’re uncertain or unsure. You got the blind following the blind then. In the past everyone didn’t have...the way they felt about a song, it mattered. They heard it for the first time, if they didn’t understand it or get it the very first time they heard it, after they played it so many times and knew all the words to the song they would say, “I do like this song.” They didn’t have an opportunity to play with someone else’s thought process or make someone feel like they’re uncertain about it before it actually grew on them."
Read more of the interview at Complex.
