50 Cent Speaks on Internal Conflict While at Interscope Records

In a recent interview with Forbes, 50 Cent spoke on internal conflicts with his bosses during his last years at Interscope Records. He commented on not being able to promote his SMS headphones in his My Life video in 2012, which is/was in competition with Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine's Beats By Dre headphones.

"Interscope is Beats Records. There's no artist that has a marketing budget supporting what they're actually doing that doesn't have Beats headphones in the actual visual to support that brand, that company. So when I invested in SMS Audio, it kind of made people afraid."  (Forbes)

This is my take on this- Dr. Dre (50 Cent's former boss) launched his line of Headphones (Beats By Dre) in 2006, and it didn't start making headway till 2010. Wall Street Journal recorded that between 2010-2012, Beats By Dre increased five-folds in growth, and it hit the $1 billion dollar mark. And then, in 2011, Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson decided to launch his own line of headphones (SMS Audio), and compete with is boss. Why would your bosses (Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine) support you? You are are their new competition. Think about it...this is business, nothing personal. I think 50 shouldn't have gone into that line of business till he left the label.

 In a past interview with Complex, He also spoke on the success of SMS Audio internationally.

"I've launched SMS in 59 countries. We pretty much turned it into Adidas. Nike is strong in America, but internationally, Adidas has soccer. Huge. It's a lot of different things and territories. I don't know if it has a connection with my touring at those territories. If you've had huge success out there in the hip-hop culture over the past decade, you have the ability to tour in areas that weren't open markets before." (Complex)

I am riding with him on this one; SMS Audio might not be big in America, but 50 Cent has some die-hard fans in other countries of the world. Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, England...these countries have some ride-or-die 50 Cent fans that will support anything he puts his hands into, so i believe him when he says he is very successful with SMS Audio internationally.