50 Cent: The Clean-up Man Part Two
By Houston Williams
With books, film, video games, drinks, clothing, a label, and an already platinum music career, 50 Cent is going to soon require a consumer report of his own. In the event that’s not going to happen, AllHipHop.com wanted to check with 50 on his many forms of merchandise, and get a sense of just how connected 5-0 is to his product.
Like he was his own marketing department, 50 Cent tells us about his biography, the re-release of The Massacre, and it’s special treats – and oh yeah, just what makes a thug cry. When you’re this busy… who has time for pool parties?
AllHipHop.com: Tell us about this video game you’re cooking up…
50 Cent: You know, I see how much time [people] spend playing video games while we commute fromcity to city and I see how much, like, we even got the s**t in the trucks. It’s on the cars while we’re going back and forth. They’re playing Driver, different video games. I just wanted to put together the best possible game and Blue Pool is like my answer to Grand Theft Auto. It’s got like the highest technology. I really was hands-on on it. We actually used Terry Winter, the same writer that wrote the screenplay for my [film], Get Rich or Die Trying, to come in and pick the actual theme and concept for the video game, closer to something that I was, you know, that would related back to 50 Cent. It’s cool, man, the game is aggressive, like everything else I’ve been involved in.
AllHipHop.com: The new trend in hit records seems to be re-releasing albums the same year. What new features will the re-released The Massacre have?
50 Cent: What I did was, we shot visuals for every record on the album and the remixes on there with me, Mobb Deep, and M.O.P.’s actually featured in the videos. So, they’ll get a chance to see that. And all those visuals will come out on September 6th. It’ll have a DVD with 21 videos and it’ll have the new album with the new Mobb Deep [single].
AllHipHop.com: What made you do that, that new twist to it?
50 Cent: I felt like the ultimate album would be the album where you can visually see what the artist was thinking about each song [and] know how they pick what is going to work commercially. Some people are so artistic that they just care about the actual music and their choice. They pick their favorite record, even though their favorite records aren’t going to be appealing to the masses. It’s not going to actually work. And those artists, 90% of them turn out to be VH1 specials.
AllHipHop.com: So what in your book will we get that we haven’t already heard on your records?
50 Cent: A lot. Like you know the book gives a lot more details about my upbringing. You know, what my lifestyle was like ahead of the actual music. And you know how when you tell a story, like I had a writer come out with me, actually Chris X wrote the book, right. Him and Terry Winters, the guy who wrote the screenplay, [they] went out on the road with me for three months.
AllHipHop.com: How’d you organize the sessions?
50 Cent: You can imagine if I asked you to tell me your life story you would start and skip over so many things and have to go back at different points and then you have to explain, well this happened between this time. And that’s kind of what happened because I ended up telling so many different stories and so many different things in pieces because it’s impossible for you to tell your life story in one shot and not miss something that you need to go back to make a reference to. So I did that over and over with them until they got the best story. Now Terry had to modify it for the screen. It’s impossible for you to make a film that can actually show your life, 29 years of your life in an hour and a half. You got to pick scenes and develop things and make for an interesting film as opposed to an actual book. The book kind of gives you, you know, like the actual play-by-play. This could have easily been 300 pages instead of 20 pages for the book. Do you know what I mean?
AllHipHop.com: Tell us about your acting in Get Rich or Die Trying… Was it a difficult transition?
50 Cent: Well I don’t want to halfway do anything. And I know how much, you know, people would like to say, “Well, he’s a great rapper, but he sucked in this film.” So I spent two months preparing for the actual role with an acting coach specifically for the role because, you may say, you’re playing yourself, “what do you have to prepare for?”
AllHipHop.com: What about memorization skills?
50 Cent: I can remember the words to a song without writing it down and lay the whole record. So as far as memorization skills, I don’t have issues with that. But I have to be able to make the right expressions facially and respond the way I would respond to different things that fit the actual character. And there is things that the character in the film would do that 50 Cent wouldn’t do. Like I wouldn’t cry in front of you, you know what I’m saying? But I had to be able to condition myself to the point that I could cry on cue.
AllHipHop.com: What did you think about that made you cry on cue, that allowed you to do that?
50 Cent: You know what I think about?
AllHipHop.com: What?
50 Cent: I’ve had a lot of rough experiences in my life and there’s one thing that makes things easy for me to do. I think about failing. You know, it’s important to me to continue to progress. You know, I haven’t slowed down. I haven’t stopped at all. So it’s the same mentality that we apply to the strip.
AllHipHop.com: Okay. Wow, that’s crazy because I know some people, they might think like of a parent, or not a parent, a lost loved one or, I don’t know, their dog got ran over or something when they were a kid or something like that.
50 Cent: I think about people who for no reason achieved – in every situation there’s two sides to it, you know like the point. Like, my life might be inspiring to some people who just accept it for what it is, and others, they envy me. You know what I’m saying? And there’s a clash, I just like acknowledge the people who would like to see me do bad. So because I’m constantly acknowledging them, I’m watching. I’m aware of people’s actions. Like even down to the records, my choice of writing two bars about each person that said something or expressed them, their uncomfortability with the success I’ve been having.
AllHipHop.com: Do you think you’ll ever exhaust yourself?
50 Cent: You know, and I’m so far from that being on my second album that I can’t even – see, that’s so far from where I’m at that maybe I’ll have to be occupied with an new opportunity. Maybe I’ll have to put out an album in another year or so. For me it’s a Muhammad Ali thing, man, you know. You say you’re going down in the third round. And when you go in the third round people believe you’re special because you said that. It feels like you have the control. And The Massacre for me, is saying I’m going to go ahead and do it.
