Last week's album sales battle between 50 Cent and Kanye West was a battle that nobody would ever really win – if 50 Cent won he wouldn't retire from music, and Kanye West would probably spiral out of control if he won.
And Kanye West has won the album sales war, which means any low-level rumbling you hear over the next few days is probably just the sound of his ego exploding. All in all, the American album sales chart says that 50 Cent's Curtis album sold 691,000 copies while Kanye West's Graduation album shifted a two-year first-week album sales best of 957,000. And, while the world waits to see if 50 Cents keeps his promise and retires from music, other acts have been quick to exploit this new-found taste for musical rivalries and have jumped on the bandwagon, like next month's Katie Melua/ Annie Lennox match-up that's so highly anticipated it's actually expected to destroy thousands of families in the coming weeks.
The good thing about hype is that the moment it ends, the world sort of comes to, rubs its eyes and wonders what the hell was just going on. And we're assuming that's the exact situation occurring in hundreds of thousands American houses now that all the fuss about the Kanye West Vs 50 Cent album sales face-off has come to an end. Back last week it seemed like the most logical thing in the world to get excited about which millionaire recording artist would make the most money by exploiting a public thirst for petty rivalry, what with the Kanye West/ 50 Cent radio debate and 50 Cent's promise to bugger off if he lost and all.
It's easy to get swept up in something like that because, to quote everyone in Canada, 50 Cent is rubbish. So when Kanye West started outselling 50 Cent early last week it was a beautiful thing to witness, especially when 50 Cent started making up a bunch of excuses to try and back out of his retirement promise. And now, just like in Britain, Kanye West has beaten 50 Cent once and for all in America, outselling him by more than quarter of a million albums. And it was all for what? So that 50 Cent can manfully dodge any questions about quitting music and Kanye West can mistake some album sales for an urgent charity drive to save the African AIDS orphans? E! Online reports:
"I just want people to listen to the album all the way through and tell their friends," West told E! News' Ryan Seacrest today. "It was incredible, the amount of support. It seems like my whole life I've been trying to break through and I've been the underdog. Anybody who didn't get the album, please go out and buy it. We're trying to take this album to 10 million. You don't understand, those numbers are like 'N Sync numbers in their day." … "I am very excited to have participated in one of the biggest album release weeks in the last two years," Fiddy told the AP. "Collectively, we have sold hundreds of thousands of units in our debut week. This marks a great moment for hip-hop music, one that will go down in history."
For now, it doesn't actually look as if 50 Cent will retire from music after all, despite his promise and the pounding that he took in the charts. In fact, 50 Cent is apparently so riled by losing this contest that he now wants to release a new album each time Kanye West's label brings out a landmark album. That'd be interesting, because 50 Cent already sounds creatively bankrupt after only his third album – so we'd quite like to hear how useless he'd sound if Chingy, Ghostface Killah, Rihanna, Bon Jovi and Mariah Carey all brought new albums out within the space of a few months. And, anyway, all this talk of rivalry is pointless because Kanye West's Def Jam label and 50 Cent's Interscope label are both owned by Universal, so they're both playing for the same side in any case.
But what about Kanye West? Now he's beaten 50 Cent, all that's left for him to do is sit back and look at his figures. His album is number one in America, the UK, Canada and Japan; he's set a new single-week digital sales record and Graduation is the first album to sell over 800,000 copies in a week since his last one.
Yeah, that'll make him less unbearable.
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viper says
Fitty Cent was on Howard Stern and when asked about quitting the biz, laughed and said that hype was to push sales. Get with it.
alex says
fifty cent is the best and i dont know how kenny could win and thet is a lie LIER!!!!@#$
Tim says
No one cares about these self-absorbed, narcisistic, non-artists. They won’t even be around 10 years from now.
Kim says
How do you know if they won’t be around 10 years from now…Some people said the same thing about Hip-Hop and look it’s still going on strong…Don’t hate
because you will still hear about 50 cent and kanye 10 years from now your kids will probably be listening to them and to the newest Hip-Hop artist of the future.
mike says
Who cares! The music is (if it can be called that) insipid,juvenile, and demeaning to all races.
sherboy says
i can’t believe people can be so hypocritical. 50 cent is a better rapper than kanye on any day. He is rap’s mvp
PPG says
kanye is not a rapper , he is a pop artist
JBollocks says
You’re all full of poo-ish or such-like opinions.
It’s widely accepted in the civilised world that Young MC is by far and away the best rapper ever!
condry mashabela says
kanye west is da Man…
Hala back… Haters