Interview: 50 Cent

Nov 7, 2007, 10:45 GMT

US rapper 50 Cent spoke launched his European tour with a concert in Dublin Ireland this week and spoke in an interview with Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. © PRN / PR Photos

Dublin - US rapper 50 Cent spoke launched his European tour with a concert in Dublin Ireland this week and spoke in an interview with Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Q: Few people know what to make of the apparent rivalry between yourself and rapper Kanye West. What's up with that?

A: Its not a rivalry. You know what it is, it's just the competitive nature of Hip Hop. He's never said anything disrespectful or expressed any discomfort to the success I've been having.

So when we got to actually releasing the records, I had to make it a competition. So I had to raise the stakes by saying I would retire if I didn't sell more records than him and do different things out there because he got quite, when not usually that quiet because he'll be the guy is voicing his opinions on things at awards shows and stuff.

See trophies mean a whole lot to him.

Q: Why have you continued to lay your life bare in your music and what has this achieved?

A: Eminem did this, you know the relationship with his mom, all of these issues. He puts so much of his personal issues into his music that they (fans) have that context. So, they feel like they know him personally.

And I try to do the same thing from my perspective because I've seen how effective that was for him ... then if people appreciate it, it means that they actually like me.

I think worldwide I'll be recognized as one of the biggest rap artists, if not, the biggest rap artist.

I go places that other hiphop artists haven't generated enough interest to have them brought out to these places, like Estonia and Cyprus where they've only seen Michael Jackson.

So to these are critical to me because it feels I'm representation of the entire artform at that point opposed to it just being my presentation of my music. So it changes my thought process, it creates butterflies in my stomach, it makes me feel like I felt when I was first starting.

Q: As a rapper who is increasingly being seen as an influential player in the genre, what direction will you take your music and where do you see Hip Hop heading?

A: It'll change.

My content in the music will change gradually because my perspective is changing. I'm not subjected to the same things, so creatively I'll make different choices as I move forward.

So look forward to me writing from a different perspective. What I've been trying to do is capture the mood of how things were prior to my success with music, so I've been going back to thinking about short portions and points in my life to create songs that have some substance. Each one of the songs will have something that actually applies to me in a different way.

When I wrote Hate it or love it, I wrote: 'Coming up I was confused, My mother was kissing a girl...'. Now its becoming more and more common to have two females in a relationship. When you have a child in that actual relationship, the kid shouldn't feel that it is impossible for them to become successful in the future.

See, my experience where my mom was attracted to women. I didn't know what it was at that point because my mom passed when I was eight, so I'm speaking from a time period where I was maybe six years old. So, there's nothing odd about females having female friends around but I learned from my grandparents later that it was more than them just being friends.

If I didn't actually have someone to tell me what that was that I was seeing at that point, I wouldn't have been able to identify anything abnormal about that relationship.

Q: What about the much-criticized aggressive content of your music?

A: For me, I don't receive trophies and I believe its over the aggressive content. But from an artist's perspective I'd rather write what I wanna write and not receive a trophy for it than to fit with what they think is the right thing that should be presented to the public.

So I say to fans I do it because of the money, because they won't acknowledge the material.

I have to actually make metaphors for the actual feelings at the time. So I actually create something that I feel is coming from somewhere real. I've got to expand it on some levels for entertainment purposes or to minimise it.

Like when you're talking about the aggressive content in the music, its been expanded. If you hear it each time its some of the same, its me trying to capture the same experience perfectly opposed to it being a whole separate incident, a whole other incident.