As 50 Cent continues to celebrate the 20th anniversary of her magnum opus Get Rich or Die Tryin’, the G-Unit luminary is revealing more tidbits about the making of his lauded debut effort. In an interview with The Rebecca Judd Show on Apple Music 1 during his pit stop in the U.K., 50 disclosed his least favorite song from the decorated rap album.
“‘Many Men’ was my least favorite at that point because, musically we was in the boom-bap phase,” he explained. “We was in that hard-hitting intensity, the energy on the records, and it’s the slowest song on Get Rich or Die Tryin’. And it’s now the tempo that the artists are rapping to. So the fast tempo, hard-hitting beats, that was that era, that time period. And the whole album had it.”
Speaking about the 2003 set, which earned a Grammy nod for best rap album, the rapper reflected on what he wanted two decades ago and his thoughts on one-hit wonders. “If you had asked me to make a wish in 2003, I would’ve just wish that my music was a hit. I didn’t see 20 years ahead in music like that,” he told Judd. “I’m just that at the moment for it to work.”
“And then what’s crazy is most artists, they think they’re ready before they are,” he continued. “Most good artists, they’ve thought they were ready before they actually could at it, but they’ve had that window of time to work that allowed them to actually become good enough. That’s why we have one-hit wonders in hip-hop culture. Because when that happens, they have that first hit and then it takes them out of the studio to go perform and to go meet all the distractions to come with being a successful artist, and then they land back in the studio without being trained to know how to create the next song. So they be stuck with that one hit.”
Earlier this month, 50 celebrated “In Da Club” — the album’s lead single — earning a diamond certification from the RIAA. The record soared to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 2003, marking his first single to reach the summit. It stayed on top for nine weeks, and remained on the chart for 30 weeks.
“My run was so uncomfortable that everyone would like to forget that it happened,” 50 said in an interview for Billboard‘s Feb. 9 digital cover story this year. “That’s just the way it is with the artist community. I didn’t come in being friendly because I had to find a way into it — not find a way to be good enough to work in the community. The biggest compliment in the early stages was that artists felt like they’d made it when they got the deal. You had to earn the right to have the deal.”
