In a recent interview series with Hardknock TV, 37-year-old hip-hop mogul Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson spoke candidly about his severed financial relationship with former G-Unit members Tony YaYo, The Game, Lloyd Banks and Young Buck.
The group was blown up after years of success that 50 claims he hand-fed to them—enabling laziness and leading to a sense of entitlement and lack of appreciation for his efforts.
“[I got] to the point where I was writing their music. Helping them with their albums….I think that there are certain things you do where you enable people and they feel like you are supposed to do that.” Fif explains. “This is how we do it versus they appreciate you actually doing it. So I made that mistake also."
Fif says his refusal to let his G-Unit compadres fall victim to the same sidekick profiling that hindered the solo opportunities of groups like Eminem’s D-12 and Nelly’s St. Lunatics—led to the problem. With their failed experiences in mind, he forced the issue on getting G-Unit albums released.
“I was adamant about positioning them properly,” 50 said, “ because those crews, with D12 and St. Lunatics, had people that spearheaded them like Eminem and Nelly that had so much success, those projects would take two years before they would finish. When you launch two albums before you get to them,” 50 continued, “people start to see them like they see this backdrop like, 'You're the guy in the background with Nelly, I know you. They know you for that instead of what you do as an artist. I didn't want that to happen so I made the G-Unit project at that point.”
The G-Unit fall out was incremental, but seems final. Young Buck got kicked out of the group around ’08, after associating with rappers who were known “enemies” of 50. The Game’s refusal to succumb to the “G-Unit philosophy ” led to his burial. Life-long road dawgs YaYo and Banks still have a relationship with 50 outside of music, but he’s made it clear he’s not a fan of their work ethic and it won’t be business as usual moving forward.
