What 50 Cent thinks of Kanye West’s White House bid
Rapper 50 Cent has weighed in on one-time foe Kanye West’s presidential run in an interview with News Corp – and he didn’t hold back.
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50 Cent is pondering one-time rival Kanye West’s increasingly odd presidential run.
“I think …” he pauses, “it’s a great marketing campaign,” compounding his earlier remarks calling it “a diversion and distraction.”
The star, whose cheerful publicist Danielle had earlier informed The BINGE Guide that the star would prefer to be called 50 than by his given name of Curtis (“someone on our team called him Curtis once and he laughed at them”), is sitting in his home office in New York, speaking over Zoom, decked out in sharp navy blazer and pristine white skivvy, one that very few people could pull off.
“We’re both adjusting,” he laughs of the new post-COVID way of doing business.
These days, 50 is a long way from the club: the 45-year-old has turned into a major Hollywood player.
Power, the TV show he produced and starred in, was US TV network Starz’ highest rating show ever and surprisingly popular with Aussie audiences on Stan.
Not surprisingly, in 2018, he signed a new four-year production deal with the network, said to be worth more than $A200 million.
Power told the story of James “Ghost” St Patrick, a drug dealer who opens a nightclub in New York as a way of going legitimate.
50 played Kanan Stark, Ghost’s friend-turned-rival, who met an untimely end. The show has, at times, mirrored the rapper’s life. In his younger days he dealt drugs in New York and, in 2000, was shot nine times at close range. (He has said that part of one bullet is still lodged in his tongue.)
Indeed, the show’s creator Courtney Kemp has said she looked no further than her producing partner for inspiration.
“He really helped me build Ghost,” Kemp said in a 2014 interview, “because I am not actually a super rich, urban human. I’m kind of middle of the road.”
After six seasons, the show ended earlier this year, but 50 and Kemp were ready to go with a spin-off, Power Book II: Ghost, which had been in the works well before Power wrapped up production.
“This time around, the show follows the fortunes of Ghost’s son Tariq (Michael Rainey Jr.) who [spoiler alert!] is dealing with the fallout from his father’s death.
“I enjoy the storytelling process. With music, simplicity is the key to it. Like, ‘Go shorty, it’s your birthday …’ That’s not rocket science,” 50 laughs.
“The process is really interesting in film and television because, it never is an original idea. No matter how talented the writers are, it’s never original, and it morphs into something different as you go forward. I enjoy that process.”
50 says he’s a storyteller at heart, but there’s a serious side to his work.
His shows, including Power and particularly For Life (about a black man wrongly imprisoned which he also produced), have often focused on social justice issues and those borne of his own experience.
Now, in the wake of global protests following the May death of George Floyd while
in police custody, they’ve clearly taken on a new resonance.
“Because of the timing of For Life, it was completely spot on for what was happening at the time,” he says, explaining the broadcast in the US happened at the time of Floyd’s murder and subsequent mass protests.
“It’s very rare that something happens in the United States and you see people protesting in the UK or Australia. It went around the world … it was all over the place. There was something there that everyone was connected to and affected by at the same time.”
The death of Floyd has changed the on-screen stories 50 wants to tell, but in an unexpected way: “Now, I’d like to tell stories that are actually more like Die Hard,” he says of the 1988 Bruce Willis heist-cop action classic.
“Things that make you want to smile or laugh at this point, to have some fun, because there’s a lot of things to distract you and to offer that energy out there already. If I had a choice, I would rather stick to things that are as little more upbeat because it’s pretty rough out
there.”
As such, 50 also likes to bring his friends into his television orbit.
On Power Book II: Ghost, mega Power fan and music icon Mary J Blige joins the cast, following on from another close friend Kendrick Lamar’s acting debut in Power (the rapper received rave reviews).
“Mary, I knew she was a fan of the show because she reached out and told me. She was like, ‘Yo, I love this show.’
“Mary and her friends, they were having Power parties,” 50 says.
“They were watching the show and all coming together and watching. It was their thing to do. And because of that, I was like, ‘I wonder if I can get her to do it.’ And I started trying to get her into a position where I could get her to work on the show.”
50 says part of Power’s pull was that fans – like Blige – would host viewing parties, making it a must-watch event, rare in today’s streaming culture.
“You would see the people and they would have the clips online of them enjoying themselves [watching the show]. Like the theme music would come on and they’d be like partying and having fun – it’s rare today to have a show that does that.”
For 50, the music used on his shows is as important as the drama. In fact, he sees it as another character.
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“It was really important for me to have the music be up to standard in the show because you know if there’s a place for bad music, it’s television. That’s the last place where they put the money in the budget,” he howls with laughter.
Once an outlier, 50 has now firmly planted himself as part of the Hollywood establishment. Not that he feels it.
In February, he was awarded with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
For the rapper, who says he has never placed any importance around trophies and
awards, the recognition didn’t mean much – until he arrived at the ceremony.
“It wasn’t that important to me until I got there. I was like, ‘Whoa, I should have prepared something.’ And then there were people there I’d known and who had been with me through it all and it became really important to me and all of a sudden, I got nervous,” he says.
“Actually, Mary J Blige called me before I went to speak at the ceremony, and I was like, ‘Yo, Mary, I’m nervous.’ And she was like, ‘You got that, don’t worry. You’re going to be
all right.’ And, you know, it was great.”
* Power Book II: Ghost streaming Sunday, September 06 on Stan.