Curtis Jackson b.k.a. 50 Cent may have a little ways to go before he’s comfortably playing Texas Hold ‘Em with Dr. Dre’s bank, but the business-minded rapper still knows how to make an exit with his pockets bulging, opposed to the atypical other way around.
As the release date to 50 Cent’s first album in five years draws closer, the superstar artist is opening up a bit about the details of his departure from Interscope and how it made him “get richer,” so to speak.
As he tells Canada’s Business News Network, the main reason for his musical hiatus upon completion of his most recent album (2009’s Before I Self Destruct) was due to some financial adjustments on his record label’s end where they ended up owing him $23 million dollars.
“I’ve spent a long time period on hiatus,” he clarified to BNN’s Kristina Partsinevelos. “I was in the back portion in the music business. I was in the business portion of music for four years. Because it was my fifth and final album requirement for Interscope we was in a position where we would have to do audits and go through the books and everything. It there was conflicts in different areas.”
Few artists are as competent with their paperwork sensibilities as 50 is and he continued to show how he dominates in that realm of his career. “My album Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ is the largest debuting Hip-Hop album and the way we sold ringtones at that point is exactly how we sell the single,” 50 continued. “So, the language in the contracts spoke to the same light and the way I would be paid off a ringtone–if that’s the way I was to be paid off the singles would mean that they owed me like another $23 million, maybe? So we went through that process and it took for four years actually. It took a while for us to get through it.”
Throughout it all, 50 has maintained the business aspects of his departure hasn’t affected his personal relationship with Dr. Dre and Eminem, which are obviously two allies any sensible rapper would want to keep.
Watch the entire video interview below. That money undoubtedly came in handy when he got hit with that Sleek Audio lawsuit.
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Photo: Dennis Van Tine/Future Image/WENN.com
