50 Cent is all about his business, but it appears that he still is cautious about his choices.
The mogul recently recalled a previous deal that he turned down due to its potential, at the time, of uprooting the success he’d built.
During a 2020 interview on Hot 107.9, Irv Gotti, who founded Murder Inc., claimed that he had blocked 50 Cent from being able to be signed.
Gotti shared that if he could go back in time, he would’ve allowed the rapper to sign with Atlantic Records instead of ultimately leading him to Dr. Dre and Eminem.
While speaking on his friendship with Eminem in an interview with Brian J. Roberts, 50 Cent recounted how due to Gotti’s apparent sabotage, he passed on a $1.3 million record deal offer from Universal Music Group.
Gotti’s label is a subsidiary of Def Jam, which is a division of Universal Music Group.
“Irv [Gotti] was talking in an interview and he was talking about he was blocking me,” 50 Cent told Roberts. “Like, he was blocking everything. He said, ‘I blocked him into a good situation. And it just went off.’… I wouldn’t do business with people who had direct associations or any influence to the things that [Murder Inc.] had that was working.”
“Dino Delvaille came and offered me [$1.3 million] to do a G-Unit [album] and my solo album at Universal and I just turned the deal down,” he continued. “And Tony Yayo didn’t understand. He was like, ‘What? [$1.3 million] and you not gon’ do it? What? That’s like saying we hit the lotto and you not going to pick up the ticket.’ And I’m like, ‘Nah, it’s not the right deal,’ because it was in the Universal system. Def Jam was there and those guys already was making money from that system — where they could influence and sabotage everything that I had going.”
The recent interview isn’t 50 Cent’s first instance of mentioning the turn of events. Back in 2020, he responded to Gotti’s interview with an Instagram post.
View this post on Instagram
In the past, Ashanti has come forward with her own story of how Gotti attempted to block her moves in the music industry, as previously reported by AfroTech.
“Irv got into a dark place,” she told Angie Martinez. “He was blocking a lot of things, you know what I’m saying? Irv was telling DJs don’t play the record. You know what I’m saying? Again we already spoke about him not allowing me to come to the studio, you know? He was just telling people, don’t work with me.”
