Before I Self Destruct was a disappointing effort both critically and commercially worse yet, it was so forgettable that the general public tends not to even realize how badly it missed the mark. Unfortunately, by the time Before hit stores in November 2009, it seemed that the 50 Cent who ran the game only four years earlier was well on his way to self destruction. When the economy turned in 2008, the Kid’s economic ventures soured and allegedly led him to lose millions in the stock market, causing him to delay the release of his fourth album, Before I Self Destruct. The only lingering hit single from Curtis was “I Get Money,” a solid song that ultimately lacked the appeal of “In Da Club,” “21 Questions,” “P.I.M.P,” “Disco Inferno” and “Candy Shop,” the smash hits that graced his first two albums, Get Rich or Die Tryin’ (2003) and The Massacre (2005). After the 2007 release of Curtis-which, at heart, was a lackluster album that doesn’t hold a candle to his earlier work-he effectively disappeared from the rap scene for a bit, content to take his endorsement deal with VitaminWater to the bank while drifting from his own product a bit (though he did rake in $100 million in 2007 from that deal alone, so perhaps you can’t blame him). Of course, 50 reneged on his vow to quit the rap game-but you might not realize it. The problem for 50 Cent was that, even in selling 691,000 copies of Curtis, he had lost the sell-off to a very well-reviewed Kanye album that nearly went platinum in that first week alone. shelves, selling nearly 1.6 million copies combined in the first week and marking only the second time in recorded history that two albums moved over 600,000 units in one week. Ultimately, the numbers reflected this frenzy: Graduation and Curtis flew off U.S.
The artists’ respective fan bases were electrified, vowing to raid stores the day the albums dropped and ensure “victory” for their favorite rapper. When 50 Cent and Kanye West were each set to release their third studio album September 11, 2007, Fif made a bold statement-if his Curtis didn’t outsell Ye’s Graduation, then he would retire from rap.Īt the time, the G-Unit general’s brashness seemed to fall in line with the oft-repeated cliché that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. It was a manufactured feud, of course, not deeply rooted in bad blood between two rappers, but rather drummed up in the spirit of a friendly competition of sorts. In the second week of September 2007, the hip hop world was abuzz with exactly what usually sets the hip hop world abuzz: a good feud.