Friday, December 5th, 2008
The recession is affecting everyone, from those making minimum-wage to those making millions off of rap albums and mineral water. Before you feel to bad for yourself, consider—have you lost millions? Because 50 Cent is losing millions. Fiddy explained his woes to the Canadian Press:
Well yeah, I lost a couple million dollars already, you see what I’m saying? I sit with my investors and business managers and accountants looking at the numbers and I’m like, ‘Yo, the values of stocks in different areas that I invested in are decreasing!’ So I take the loss like everybody else.
Well, not quite everyone else. The once and former Curtis arrived at London’s Mayfair Hotel today in a Rolls Royce, followed by a 15-man security team in a stretch Hummer. Unfortunately, someone left the keys in the Rolls, forcing one of the crew to open the door with a wire hanger. See? He doesn’t have some fancy, rich man’s unlocking technique. Has to use a wire hanger just like everyone else. “I’m like the fire hydrant,” says Fiddy. “I’ll be right beside the street regardless of how they feel about it.”
[Photo: Splash News Online]
Fiddy with his security, presumably minus whoever left the keys in there.
[Photo:Splash News Online]
Wednesday, October 1st, 2008
There’s no tradition in hip-hop more exciting than the feud. Since the earliest days of street-corner rhyme battles, MCs have been taking each other head-on, fighting to be the best on the block, the hottest in the neighborhood, or the king of the whole game. Rap beefs can originate anywhere, from a subtle slight to a full-on threat. Sometimes they’re funny, sometimes they’re tragic, and sometimes they’re just plain weird. Here, from old-school word wars to semi-automatic shootouts, we count down the ten biggest feuds in rap history. Click into the gallery below to begin. [Photos: Getty Images]
10. T.I. vs. Lil Flip
The battle between two of the biggest mouths in the south kicked off in 2004, when Houston's Lil Flip started taking shots at Atlanta's T.I. while the latter was incarcerated. Tensions escalated for nearly a year (T.I. dissing Flip onstage; Flip threatening to shoot T.I.'s son) before finally boiling over in March 2005, when the pair and their crews brawled in the parking lot of Houston fast-food joint Cloverburger.
High Point: T.I.'s wickedly funny deployment of old publicity photos featuring Flip dressed as a leprechaun and eating a bowl of Lucky Charms.
Winner? T.I.
9. Jay-Z vs. Noel Gallagher
When Jay-Z was announced as headliner for this year's Glastonbury festival in England, Gallagher, Oasis's guitarist and loudmouth-in-chief, called the choice "wrong" and blamed the rapper for slow ticket sales. Jay fired back that Gallagher's comments were made "out of ignorance" and, on his new track "Jockin' Jay-Z," got the last laugh: "That bloke from Oasis said I couldn't play guitar/Somebody shoulda told him I'm a fucking rock star."
High point: Jay's first 90 seconds on the Glastonbury stage, where he fake-strummed a guitar and warbled a gleefully off-key version of Oasis's "Wonderwall."
Winner? The Jigga Man
8. Ice Cube vs. N.W.A.
Sometimes best friends make the worst enemies. When Ice Cube left pioneering gangsta rap group N.W.A. in 1989 over disputes about royalties and tensions with manager Jerry Heller, he sparked an all-out war with ex-homeys Dr. Dre and Eazy-E, who accused him of being a coward and dubbed him “Benedict Arnold.” The animosity continued until Eazy-E's death of AIDS six years later.
High point: Cube's 1991 single "No Vaseline": "Hey yo, Dre, stick to producin'/Callin' me Arnold, but you been a dick/Eazy-E saw your ass and went in it quick."
Winner? The West Coast
5. Bill O'Reilly vs. Hip-Hop
Right-wing pundit O'Reilly has declared a virtual one-man war on rap, using his Fox News pulpit to take to task everyone from Jay-Z ("corrosive") to Nas ("vile" and "an abomination") to 50 Cent ("a pinhead"). In 2002, when Pepsi hired Ludacris as a spokesman, O'Reilly branded the rapper a "thug" and called for a boycott of the company; Luda was fired the next day. But rappers have struck back, too: Nas called him a racist and organized a protest outside Fox HQ earlier this year.
High point: The open letter from Ludacris's mom blasting O'Reilly's hypocrisy: "Let's keep it real ... Fox produces shows, movies, video games and air commercials that depict violence and sex, and offend and degrade women." Oh snap!
Winner? Rupert Murdoch
4. 50 vs. Everybody
Curtis Jackson is rap's version of the drunk in the corner who picks a fight with every schmo who walks in the bar. His relatively short career has included face-offs with just about everybody, including Ja Rule, the Game, Fat Joe, Jadakiss, Nas, Kelis, Shyne, Cam'ron, the Game again, Scarface, Kanye West, Young Buck, and even Oprah Winfrey. 50 wins more than he loses, but he's also a savvy enough businessman to know that no buzz is bad buzz.
High point: "How to Rob," the unreleased 1999 track that got him signed to his record deal, in which a young and hungry 50 takes shots at everyone from Mike Tyson to Mase. Can you believe it? Dude took on Mase!
Winner? 50 Cent's accountant
3. MC Shan/Marley Marl v KRS-One/BDP
The Hatfields & McCoys of rap squabbles. In the mid-'80s "Bridge Wars," Marley Marl's Juice Crew, out of Queens' Queensbridge Projects, and KRS's Boogie Down Productions, representing the South Bronx, tussled over which borough could rightfully lay claim to being the birthplace of hip-hop. Their O.G. back-and-forths and geopolitical battle rhymes set the blueprint for years of rap beef to come.
High point: "The Bridge Is Over," BDP's 1987 classic and one of rap's first classic dis songs.
Winner? The South Bronx, the South South Bronx
6. Lil Kim vs. Foxy Brown
These two gangsta molls --- Kim was a Biggie hanger-on, Foxy ran with Nas and Jay-Z --- traded insults for years on tracks like "Bang Bang" and "Play Around." Then, on February 25th, 2001, things got real, when a confrontation between the two ladies and their entourages outside NYC hip-hop station Hot 97 turned into a gunfight, and one unfortunate participant walked away with a bullet in his buttocks.
High point: After the shootout, when Foxy offered Kim a truce, Kim gave her rival the cold shoulder, saying, "We'll never be friends." Meow!
Winner? Kim went to jail, but Foxy went deaf -- we'll call it a draw
7. LL Cool J v Kool Moe Dee
This old-school feud, one of rap's longest, started when former Treacherous 3 member Kool Moe Dee accused the young upstart LL Cool J of copying his style. LL responded with the seminal "Mama Said Knock You Out," and Moe Dee shot back with "Let's Go," where he rewrote two famous initials to stand for "Lower Level/Lackluster/Last Least/Limp Lover."
High point: The cover of Kool Moe Dee's 1987 album How Ya Like Me Now, which pictured LL's trademark red Kangol hat being crushed under the wheels of a Jeep.
Winner? Limp Lover, if only for the "Mama Said..." video
2. Jay-Z vs. Nas
This battle between NYC's two heaviest heavyweights wasn't just for the keys to the city --- it was to see who would inherit Biggie's crown as King of New York and, by extension, the best rapper alive. Before the pair finally made peace in 2005, their showdown gave us half a decade of violent threats, adultery accusations and burned effigies, not to mention two of the greatest dis tracks in history (Jay-Z's "Takeover" and Nas's "Ether").
High point: The 2001 Summer Jam, Hot 97's annual hip-hop blowout, where Jay debuted "Takeover" and flashed a Jumbotron photo of Nas associate Prodigy as a teenage ballerina.
Winner? Hip-hop
1. Biggie vs. Tupac
Rap's most infamous, outsized beef is also its most tragic, with neither combatant making it out alive. Onetime friends turned bitter foes, the two titans in the East Coast-West Coast wars of the mid-'90s sparred about who shot who and who slept with whose wife until gunplay silenced them forever. Perhaps unfairly, Diddy and Suge Knight emerged unscathed.
High point: Tupac's great, scathing Biggie dis track "Hit 'Em Up," which feature possibly the most direct opening line in beef history: "First off, fuck your bitch and the clique you claim."
Winner? Nobody
Friday, September 26th, 2008
Does Fiddy have beef with Jay-Z? Because that has to be the only reason that he would claim that Jay-Z was famous only after he married Beyonce. “I’m a big fan of Jay-Z,” 50 said, “but outside of the States and hip hop circles, no one really knew who he was until he was married.” Huh?
Jay-Z and Beyonce tied the knot in April. Here are only some of the highlights of Jay-Z’s mega-career before April 2008.
Read More »
Friday, August 22nd, 2008
Let it never be said that 50 Cent doesn’t support women in media. Responding to claims that former Source editor Kim Osario is writing about their affair in a tell-all, the rapper/entrepreneur offered this chivalrous advice to would-be writers:
“I messed with Kim a while ago, she licked on my balls before the deal…when they weren’t worth much. She licked my balls once and now she’s a star. I got some advice for all aspiring women journalists, it may not make the best sellers list, but lick my balls and you are on the road to riches!”
Damn, Fiddy! Are you Alan Alda or something? That’s an even more generous offer than those vibrating replicas of your penis. Maybe you could sponsor a Take Your Daughter To 50 Cent’s Balls day. [Yo! Raps]
[Photo: Getty Images]
Thursday, August 21st, 2008
Arson investigators in Long Island are complaining that they can’t get an interview with 50 Cent about the “suspicious fire” that hit the house he was trying to evict his ex-girlfriend and son from. 50 Cent isn’t listed as a suspect, but officials claim it’s “standard procedure” to talk to the owner of any house that goes up in smoke. Is Fiddy hiding something or does he just refuse to talk to anyone that isn’t paying him? [ABC News]
[Photo: Getty Images/Public Domain]
Fiddy.
Fiddy's Rolls Royce.
Fiddy's security's stretch hummer.
Fiddy's security trying to open the Rolls Royce.
