It’s been almost four years since 50 Cent last dropped a solo LP, and the G-Unit juggernaut is in no rush to do it.
“I don’t really need the money off of the record. I want the record to be right. I’m not doing it without a plan; I’m not putting it out like that,” 50 told MTV News about his long-awaited fifth studio album.
The multiplatinum rap king points to his label Interscope and says he won’t make a move until the record company is ready. “It’s a lot of staff changes, a lot of different people moving in and moving out, so you got to kind of wait until everything’s right; until it’s settled in,” he reasoned.
50 likens himself to a basketball player with dominant skills but less team support — someone akin to Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant maybe? “I’ve been on a team where I take the ball out and throw myself the alley-oop, and I take the ball out and shoot the three-pointer myself, and I take the ball out and I dunk the ball,” he said, driving home the analogy.
That’s not to suggest that 50 hasn’t been releasing music the past few years — he’s actually been quite active. After dropping Before I Self Destruct in November 2009, he’s dropped two mixtapes (The Big 10, The Lost Tape and 5 (Murder by Numbers)) as well as a number of singles like “My Life” with Eminem and Adam Levine, “Major Distribution” and his most recent, “We Up” with Kendrick Lamar.
In the case of “We Up,” 50 was just positive that the record would be a hit, but since its release in May, it has largely remained an underground favorite. “I know it ain’t my ear [because] Kendrick said the same thing I said when I sent it to him, ‘Oh this is a hit.’ And everybody said the same thing,” he said before surmising that the market is currently oversaturated with rap music. “I think it comes from so much stuff being in front of people.”
