50 Cent Previews G-Unit Album For MTV News At His Connecticut Mansion

Hip-hop heavyweight also reiterates that Curtis was a 'dud,' hopes to reclaim his mixtape supremacy.

By Shaheem Reid

Last week, 50 Cent called his latest LP, Curtis, a "dud" via video blog. On Wednesday at his Connecticut mansion, he said the world heard him correctly, and he's not afraid to admit it.



"It was," he said at his office, located directly one floor above two clubs he has in the house. He built Club TKO to showcase singing, dancing and DJing, while the other club has a stripper pole, swing and catwalk stage tailor-made for another kind of dancing. "It was a blockbuster that I lit, and it didn't explode. I felt like it should have went a lot further than the results I received. Publicly, I feel that 50 Cent fans don't believe it was a dud. It did have 'I Get Money,' it did have 'Ayo Technology,' 'I'll Still Kill,' 'Follow My Lead' with Robin Thicke. These records were hit records, but the timing they came out was wrong. If the first record you heard off Curtis was 'I Get Money,' it would have shifted more millions in sales."

(We also chatted with 50 about the presidential race — and long-in-the-works G-Unit group album, tentatively titled Lock and Load.

50 only reveals one song title, "The Party Ain't Over," which features all four of the core Unit members, including Young Buck. Sonically, it appeals to your inner-hooligan, recalling the evaporating thump of "I Get Money," with Fif and company boasting and denouncing talk of the group's demise. There's another track on which 50 jokes that he doesn't care if his enemies fall off a building. Later, he played a Swizz Beatz-produced track, obviously named "Down" (trust us, the chorus says it all), on which 50 gloats about getting busy on the mic. Yayo, of course, is the most energetic, frequently dancing with his arms extended horizontally like airplane wings. A record called "Liar, Liar" features 50 telling a girl everything she wants to hear, knowing full well he's less than sincere.

"I created monsters," Fif would say during a quieter time upstairs in his office about his fellow G-Unit rappers. "Frankensteins. I got three of them. It's like creatively they got strong opinions on things they like. ... They'll be telling each other, like, 'Yo, I'm telling you.' They got a different way of saying it to each other than saying it to me. They be like, 'Nah, he be saying we need to keep this record.' ... I think their solo careers changed what our collaborations were in the beginning. If you look at the beginning of the mixtapes, I was creating the hooks."

50 is excited to get the G-Unit album out, but he's not going to rush it. He's back on the mixtape scene with three street CDs since last fall and another one, with DJ Drama, coming in the next few weeks. He says with so many wolves in the studio, creating material hasn't been a problem.

"You should be amazing on the album," he declared about working with so many other individuals. "You don't have to write three verses. All you have to do is one. You should write three and pick one. I'm like, 'You're a solo artist right?' I'll tell them to redo the verse [if it's not up to snub]. 'Just do it again. Let's see what the second one sounds like if we're not sure.' They don't mind. The process is interesting because they've developed their own personal liking for things they want to do. But the response to the mixtape material — which has proven to them they should listen — is making them follow what I'm saying."

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