On Tuesday (Oct. 22), Billboard shared an interview with 50 Cent, who spoke to the publication about Eminem becoming a grandfather, the BET Hip Hop Awards, “Power,” and much more. He was also asked about the highly publicized battle between Kendrick Lamar and Drake.
“I say a lot of things on social and they get upset because they look and go, ‘Ah, I’m automatically supposed to be on Kendrick’s side because of my association with Dre,’” he said. “And I love Kendrick, but I’ll say it to you: I didn’t see where what [Drake] did was wack at any point. They giving [Drake] the, ‘Oh, you wack, you finished.’ I’m like, ‘Nah, come on.’ That’s the system trying to make some sort of resistance, and it’s from the consistency. When you win consecutively, that part of the Hip Hop demographic wants you out of there. I started to feel the resistance for the Curtis album.”
50 also revealed what he told the OVO star during a post-war run-in. “I was telling him, it’s not him. I’m listening on the outskirts, it’s not you. Don’t let yourself think that for a second,” he recalled. “On some real s**t, I said, ‘They said you lost. Okay. Well, what did you lose?’ What exactly did he lose if he got $300-something million on his last tour? You didn’t lose a motherf**king thing, man.”
He continued, “If that’s the moment, you keep your creative energy in the right place and keep creating. If you slow down because you feel, 'What the f**k?' The resistance will make you feel like your material isn’t good. Then you gotta figure out how to keep pushing, how to keep creating because that’s what it feels like to you at the moment. That s**t was good for Hip Hop. It made both of them create quality material faster.”