On September 11th, both 50 Cent and Kanye West released new albums. The highly anticipated releases of both 50 Cent’s “Curtis” and “Graduation West” will certainly move and spark the inevitable duel for the top spot on Billboard’s top albums sales chart. Both rappers are quick to acknowledge that the album is superior.
Kanye tells 50 Cent, “Please, 50, don’t once sell my album and beat your album,” and 50 Cent quickly counters with, “I’m gonna stick around and sell this record—and I’ll be #1 on September 11” (Gordon Hurd, Yahoo Buzz log).
The question on everyone’s mind though is is this a legitimate rivalry in terms of words or are these two guys detesting each other in the way of old school rap battles (i.e. East vs. West) going down? They are certainly two of the most popular figures in the hip industry and thus compete as two of the. The best NFL teams but hate back to back on the road Michigan and Ohio State?
Old school rappers would probably dismiss this rivalry as a clandestine art trade in an attempt to create hype and buzz to sell more albums rather than a true battle of talent and rhymes used by rappers to compose and determine excellence.
Guerrilla marketing can be best explained as an unconventional way of carrying out promotional activities, typically on a low budget. Now, neither West nor 50 Cent and their individual labels typically have lower budgets in regards to their album promotion; however, their promotions (if indeed the rivalry is fake) would be a strategy in an attempt to market without consumers Noticing that they are being stealthily marketed to ala-marketers This reasoning can be called into question as misleading and deceptive.
This is not my advice, but let the fans decide for themselves one of these two artists. Do these two rappers have a legitimate beef with each other, or are they just selling this rivalry for more records? Should the consumer care either way while enjoying the music of the respective artists?
According to the Yahoo Buzz Index, searches for 50 are significantly more than for Kanye, which certainly does not make it clear that 50 will reign. “Graduation” is Kanye’s third studio album release, and “Curtis” is the third studio album release from 50 Cent (Wikipedia).
Kanye’s first album was released on the 18th; however, he promoted him so that he could compete head to head with the 50 New album Cento. 50 Cent stated that if Curtis’ “Graduation” was released, he would stop doing solo albums, but later retracted this statement (Wikipedia).
