Kanye West's Graduation and 50 Cent's Curtis dropped on the same day, September 11, 2007
The two rappers played up the sales competition aspect of the duel release, even appearing together on BET's 106 & Park to promote their box office battle.
Kanye won, as Graduation did 957,000 first week while Curtis did 691,000. It was the first time since 1991 that two albums did more than 600K in the same week since 1991.
During his appearance on Drink Champ's Mos Def explained why Kanye won. [Jump to 32 minutes]
"50's up and he's loading up another one," Mos said. "It was the whole battle that they were very happy to have. Kanye had a listening session that was in a movie theater [in Manhattan], I will never forget it. And what Kanye did is that you came into the movie theater and he has programs with all of the songs and some of the lyrics and caramel popcorn and like edited visuals from anima movies that he liked and played that in synch to the music. The moment he did that, I was like 'Kanye wins.' I don't even care what [50 Cent] got in the tank he is not topping this album at this time, it's just no way. It was so creative. Graduation is like a Thriller moment that people don't appropriately appreciate ... this sh*t was out of control. 50 Cent don't have nothing in response to that. He was riding the tide that Kanye created, in my opinion."
Do you agree?