By the time the feud with West rolled around, it wasn't money that motivated him it was principle. That spring, 50 Cent earned a cool $100 million as a minority owner of Vitamin Water through Glacéau's $4.1 billion sale to Coca-Cola. II as planned - though it did drop two years later and Eminem ducked Relapse - any combination of which would have suggested that hip-hop's current character was still somewhat in tact. Dre didn't release Detox, which he had been working on since 2001 Raekwon didn't release Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…Pt. DJ Drama was arrested that January for selling mixtapes, a huge indicator that every aspect of rap was changing. By the close of 2006, Nas would declare " Hip Hop Is Dead" on his eighth studio album.Įntering 2007, the crumbling framework of the old guard was too blatant to deny. Jay Z would poke his head out of post-"retirement" to release Kingdom Come, as the industry collectively questioned whether that was the idyllic return to form for the rapper-turned-president of Def Jam. Lupe Fiasco released his debut, Food & Liquor, and was met with rave reviews. Nothing street was gonna come next that was gonna eliminate him," explains Vanessa Satten, editor-in-chief of XXL Magazine. These figures alone indicated that while 50 Cent's breed of "street rap" that nearly carried him through the early aughts was arguably still thriving, something different was brewing by necessity. West was still riding high off the fumes of his 2004 debut, The College Dropout, so by that following year his sophomore work, Late Registration, gave him an impressive 860,000 sales in its first week on its way to more than 3 million copies sold. In the first week alone, The Massacre moved 1.14 million units (ultimately selling more than 5 million copies in the United States). In 2005 50 Cent released his monumental sophomore effort, The Massacre, giving Fif a significant feather in his cap with what would be the second best-selling album of that year, trailing only Mariah Carey's The Emancipation Of Mimi. The year 2007 was perhaps the tipping point for the crisis hip-hop was going through two years prior. Sure, communally speaking it was a big deal, but the rest of the world lacked enthusiasm despite hip-hop's growing popularity within the mainstream. When a beef would casually surface or a rapper was rolling out a new project, it was hip-hop's little secret. 11, 2007, anything hip-hop related never really echoed on a grandiose scale, save for the tragic losses of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. The effects of this epic matchup, however, have reverberated to this day, as hip-hop music made a hard left and hasn't returned since. Of course, we all know the results: West's Graduation won with a staggering 957,000 units sold, while 50 Cent topped out at 691,000 units.
18 release, though he bumped it up a week to set the stage for what was perhaps the biggest nonviolent event in hip-hop history - as the two duked it out in a contest to see who would take home a bigger haul of album sales. 50 Cent was geared to release Curtis on Sept.
If McGregor concentrated on his aim a little more, it sure looks like he could execute a solid first pitch.Both were at turning points in their respective careers both were dropping their all-important third albums. The ricochet off the bricks even sent Wisdom on a chase across the backstop to find the ball. The motion, delivery and throw itself make it seem like he wanted to play fetch with Clark the mascot instead of toss a strike to Patrick Wisdom. It’s not even recency bias - there has just never been a first pitch more off that the one McGregor threw at the Friendly Confines on Tuesday. Regardless, it is a first pitch that will stand the test of time for being truly horrific. The rapper immediately disputed claims that his gaffe was intentional as a publicity stunt with his new album, “Animal Ambition,” coming out in a week. The windup and throwing motion aren’t egregious, so what happened? It’s almost as if he was trying to fool everyone Patrick Mahomes style with a no-look pass to the photographers. The southpaw launched his first pitch so far left it is tough to comprehend. 50 Cent’s errant toss at Citi Field in 2014 has been the gold standard for awful first pitches for seven years.