XXL interviews 50 Cent for the December/January issue of the magazine, read some excerpts from the interview below.
On The Current Regime In Rap:
The whole culture, I think, is a little…confused. It’s not what I fell in love with, you know? So my job is to make a album that doesn’t have any holes in it, that is a representation of all of the elements I fell in love with. So, like, I look at artists to find what I like about them or why they’re hot or why they exist. And then you see that we’re creating momentum. We’re creating synthetic heat for new artists to generate interest and revenue. So the sales is some shit that ain’t really hot. You see what I’m saying? Like, the actual business of music is saying, “Oh, he’s hot!” and “Let’s try and do something to market it and sell it.” But there’s some shit that’s organic that’s out there that you see, like, without record-company assistance. People are gravitating to it.
On Who He's Competing Against:
Well, for me, I’m still up against what I’ve done. So in order to top it, I know it’s a difficult task. You know, I see the bloggers. My audience hasn’t grown with me. They keep saying, “Aw, man, I want the old 50!” ’Cause those people, it would take them on a safari. I was bringing them close enough to the animals, without being able to get hurt. I was taking them into my neighborhood, where you can very well get your ass killed.
On Working With Dr. Dre:
Dre helped me a lot on this record. I went to Los Angeles, was working out there
for a little bit. I was working on the Detox records, right. I keep saying to Dre, I’m like, “Yo, you don’t have to invent nothing. All they want is a strong version of what you gave last time.” They need a new version of that. It’s like Sade. She goes away for six years, and then she comes back with a new disc. You go, I love this shit! It reminds you of the fuckin’ shit that she gave you before she left. There’s certain artists that have that luxury. You could go away and still be interesting enough to come for people to want to hear that effort. Dre is like that. As I’m busy telling him that, I go, “Wait, maybe I’m bugging for some of the shit that I’ve been doing.” You know what I mean?
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