In 50 Cent's new book, Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter he looks back on the famous 20017 sales showdown between his album Curtis and Kanye West's album Graduation and JAY-Z's involvement in the stunt
Kanye "won" by outselling Fif by almost 300K. As 50 explained, they both really won.
“Today, selling 691,000 units your first week would be considered a massive success, but at the time the narrative was that Kanye had soundly defeated me. Of course he did beat me, but what the public couldn’t see was that I’d still earned a major victory," 50 said, and explained that his album was tracking around 400K before the "beef."
50 added that Kanye's label boss JAY-Z fully embraced the competition, whereas his, Jimmy Iovine, was indifferent.
"Jimmy Iovine might not have cared about beating Kanye, but Jay-Z, who was the head of Def Jam at the time, damn sure cared about beating me. Jay had been extremely uncomfortable with my run in NYC for years. So he did everything under the sun to make sure he could beat me through Kanye,” 50 says.
50 believes Hov's pride in that win may be why he's so down on Krazy Kanye these days.
"Jay took a lot of pride in Kanye’s victory. I think that’s one of the reasons he’s so disappointed in Kanye today," he speculated.