The Spin Interview: 50 Cent (Bigger, Longer, and Uncut)

It seems like there's more difference between Curtis Jackson and 50 Cent than you let on.
50 Cent is the aggressive portion of Curtis, and because of the musical content, there's a perception that I'm darker than I am. That's why I enjoy film projects, because they allow me to show emotions that I don't normally show through my music. Hip-hop is such a competitive art form, so anything you put out that makes you vulnerable, puts you in danger, because other people are gonna use those statements and things against you, to discredit you later.

How does it feel to release your record in this post–Don Imus, anti-rap environment where the content is under such scrutiny, and you're basically the poster boy for negative images in hip-hop?
None of this is about hip-hop. The whole thing's racial, and I mean that. When a white talk-show host made a comment, and black leaders spoke out and said he couldn't say that, the white folks got angry, so they pointed at hip-hop. Think about this. What about our First Amendment rights? What about the fact that our country's at war? We got way bigger issues out here. There's one of the president's top guys who resigned for using a dating service [Deputy Secretary of State Randall Tobias], but it's not okay to say 'ho'? That's who he's hanging out with! Hos!

Then are these black leaders, like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and Benjamin Chavis and Russell Simmons, who are saying hip-hop should be cleaned up, just hypocrites who are looking for easy publicity?
They don't mind the cable television programs giving you the same content; they don't mind the Internet having the same content available. I think it affects people a lot more to see a film where somebody realistically gets their head blown off than to listen to somebody rapping for three minutes. And what about rock'n'roll? The guy who shot up Virginia Tech was a Led Zeppelin and Nirvana fan. If he'd had a 50 Cent CD in his case, we probably wouldn't even be talking right now.

Don't you think hip-hop's a target because people think kids look at it as more real than movies, because the artists are seen as living the lifestyle they rap about?
No. No. The kids know the difference between entertainment and reality. If not, something's the matter with the kid. If a person is so out of whack that they allow music to influence them to do something violent, then they can be influenced by anybody they have a conversation with on the street.

But so many kids are in broken families these days, and they don't have parental supervision, and it's more of an at-risk situation.
So let's take the content off cable too, OK? We can sit here and talk about this until you're writing a book about it instead of a magazine article, because there is no logical way that you can make this make sense to me. How does a song that's three minutes long have a stronger impression than a film with two hours of violence? What is 300 about? It's graphic violence, computerized warriors killing each other, and it's huge entertainment. But with hip-hop, because it's racial, they'll try to find anything on any level, and point at a person and say, "That's not right," especially if it's one individual, one artist, hoping that that person makes a foolish response that puts him in a space where they can make an example of him.

Like Cam'ron saying on 60 Minutes that he wouldn't snitch on a serial killer if he lived next door.
Yeah, he was just stupid. They set him up and he fell for it.

I think a lot of these morality police types just want you to sit down and agree that the violent or sexist content on your records is potentially damaging to children, and that you're open to possibly adjusting your lyrics.
Why?

Because those images play into negative black stereotypes and it's time for rappers to take more responsibility.
Well, isn't it negative to show that stuff everywhere?

Yeah, but what about you?
I ain't gonna say that. I'll never say that. People want all kinds of things, but that doesn't have anything to do with me. That's based on what they want. You can't just submit to everybody's wants, and then expect people to respect you. If you do that, then what do you have left that's special about you?

He pauses for a second. Sitting on a sofa across from me, he looks to the side, then excitedly inches up closer, clasps his fingers together almost formally, and smirks.

Look, let's talk about Scarface [the 1983 cocaine odyssey written by Oliver Stone and directed by Brian DePalma]. OK? And how it impacted people. It was more than just violence in a film. It gave you a description of somebody coming from not having anything, to selling drugs to the point where they made it beyond the expectations of anybody who actually sells drugs in the neighborhood. It showed us that. And Godfather, Goodfellas, those were movies that made an impression. If you made a study of people who are incarcerated and asked them if they have those films on rotation, I have no doubt they would tell you, yes, they watch those films, repeatedly. Did that condition them mentally to go out and do what they did?

No, but all those films ended very badly, and you can say that there was a moral of sorts involved because the heroes all died or were ruined.
And you know what people are gonna say? "I'm gonna do exactly what he did, I'm just not gonna go out like he did!" The statistics tell you that [if you're selling drugs] your ass is going to jail or you're dying, one or the other. It's obvious. And people know that, and they still go into that life. They tell themselves that they're going to get out before something bad happens. It doesn't matter what movie they're watching or what song they're listening to. You can't use entertainment as an excuse. I wanna show you something, come here for a second.

He gets up and asks me to follow him out of the recording studio and down the hallway. We enter a room where members of the G-Unit entourage are congregated. HBO is blaring from a wide-screen TV. A scowling Tony Yayo sits at a table to the right, his back against the wall, as he methodically constructs an enormous blunt. 50 Cent addresses the group.

Yo, let me ask you a question. People who have been incarcerated, for whatever reason, around us in the hood, how often do they watch movies like Menace to Society, Goodfellas, Casino, Scarface?

The entourage immediately barks answers: "All of them, all the time." "Repeatedly, repeatedly." "People watch Scarface 100 times a year, B." "Over and over and over."

Why do you think they watch 'em? I think it helps give them the aggression necessary to move around in their actual neighborhoods where all this shit is going on. They got the tape at home and they're watching it over and over, and they come outside with a different swagger. A movie is two hours of glorifying the lifestyle, but you're gonna talk about a song that's three minutes long? What about DVDs like King of Cocaine, about Pablo Escobar, that gives them the fuckin' information! BET won't play graphic images of the music, but they'll show you The Wire, and The Wire is giving you a vivid description of what the lifestyle is like. And American Gangster is showing you each one of the individuals and how they did it. It makes them legends much more than a song. You got Tookie [Williams], I don't know him, I'm not a Crip, I'm not from Los Angeles, but I'm more aware of him now after seeing American Gangster and seeing the information on him. It's like, wow, now I'm familiar with him. But they'll pardon Charles Manson and not Tookie Williams. You can find things wrong with the world and we can talk about it all day.

"That's right, uh-huh, yeah," says Yayo, licking the blunt. The peanut gallery chimes in, "Yeah, yeah, yeah."