50 Cent sat down for an hour-long conversation with Hot 97 about the falling apart of G-Unit, and explained why the individual members didn’t get the same amount of fame as he did.
50 Cent recently sat down to talk with Hot 97, and it was definitely a lengthy interview, broken up into two parts it lasted an hour. The topics they broached were plentiful, including the New York rap scene and whether or not it’s been revived, G-Unit and crews in general, as well as Summer Jam, and 50 sitting on a plane beside Ja Rule and his beef with the rapper (and Rick Ross beef).
Although Fiddy is returning to the music with Animal Ambition on the way, his former G-Unit member Tony Yayo still seems bitter about their break up and the way he’s been treated by 50. Talking to some of the Hot 97 hosts, Fif spoke on the way that crews work and what went wrong for members like Yayo.
“They’re like my little brothers,” 50 said of his G-Unit affiliates. “I like for them to sustain their interest in the public. Tony deaded G-Unit”, he said of Tony Yayo’s recent backlash towards the crew. “If he can do that, then it’s dead. I’m watching…I got that information like you got it.”
Fif continued to explain how G-Unit got put on so fast, they had no time to perfect their grind. “New 50 Cent, and then you heard these other guys’ voices you don’t know from no where. Be real. And then they actually got on, so fast, you just said, the energy surrounding the material I created just went so much that even shifted New York City’s hip-hop culture. If they [G-Unit] there, they ridin’ the wave, they don’t know what it’s like to have to grind, to get the attention from the very beginning.”
He admitted, “Maybe I enabled them.” Before adding that he still talks to Yayo (although Banks may be a different story), “Yayo’s in four of the thirteen videos I shot. I just shot ’em.” “He was there, then he won’t home frustrated and said something.”
“Banks actually wanted his independence”, 50 explained as to how the PLK gained his distance from the group.
50 continued to compare the G-Unit situation to that of other crews whose buzz has since died down, specifically, D12 and Nelly’s St. Lunatics, and explained why the individual members didn’t exactly pop off.
“Can you name every member of D12? Okay,” the rapper said. “Can you name every member of the St. Lunatics? I’mma tell you why. I’mma tell you why. I’mma tell you why you can’t name them. It’s because they all had to wait til after the second cycle of their leader. So, Nelly’s first album popped. Then Nelly’s second album popped. And because those albums were hugely successful albums it took a long time for the record to be over for them to get to the next album. So, it was so long that everybody just became they crew with Nelly. It’s like Em. D12’s the crew with Em. G-Unit, the first record came out, boom. I forced the G-Unit album to come out. Interscope didn’t want the G-Unit album. They wanted the next 50 Cent record. It just sold 13 million records. So, I forced that record to come out. It caused Lloyd Banks to sell three million records off of the momentum following right off of that. Buck, 1.8 million records. Then Yayo like 800-something thousand…And then it’s like ‘Okay, now we gotta work.’”
Watch Part 1 and Part 2 of the interview below. Animal Ambition arrives on June 3rd.
