50 Cent Speaks On Past G-Unit Empire

There was a time 50 Cent's G-Unit empire was the biggest thing in the hiphop world. After he blew up with his "Get Rich Or Die Trying" album in 2003, he dropped a G-Unit album (Beg For Mercy) with his homeboys the same year. He basically made his close friends (Lloyd Banks & Tony Yayo) success stories overnight. In a recent interview, 50 Cent spoke on why he was so bank on making sure his cew members tasted the same level of success he had attained.

"A lot of people here may not know every member of D-12 by name or every member of the St. Lunatics. But chances are, they recognize who was a part of G-Unit. It's because I was so conscious of the people around me that, after the first record took off - and Interscope Records really didn't want - Why do you want a G-Unit record when you can have a 50 Cent record when that one is the largest debuting Hip Hop album? You want another 50 Cent record. So I was adamant about positioning them properly because those crews, D-12 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. They would come out and be such a huge success that they're traveling and touring with so much going on that their crew would be there and they would turn into those guys that are just in the background...I didn't want that to happen so I made the G-Unit project at that point and it offered them different things.

I got to the point where I was writing the music. Helping them with their albums, putting the right choruses and production around them so they could make the album right. I think that there are certain things you do where you enable people and they feel like you are supposed to do that. This is how we do it, versus they appreciate you actually doing it. So, I made that mistake also."

Even if you don't like 50 Cent, you have to give him credit for putting Lloyd Banks, Tony Yayo and Young Buck on. I mean, the same year he blew up, he dropped a G-Unit album. And the next year, he made sure Lloyd Banks and Young Buck dropped their debut albums (Hunger for More and Straight Outta Ca$hville)...the same year, in 2004. And then Yayo got out of jail, and dropped his debut album in 2005 (Thought of a Predicate Felon). I think the problem was that he made them a liltle bit to dependent on him, and they didn't have that push to branch out and do their own thing after 50 stopped putting efforts into the development of their individual career's.