Yes, this really happened!
Diva vs diva!
Perez recently went head to head with 50 Cent to talk about A LOT. And, in this, part one of our exclusive two part interview, we start things right off with confronting the rapper about his history of homophobia.
We also discuss his mother, who was a lesbian, his recent appearance on Oprah, reading Deepak Chopra, if he still wants to be making music in 10 years – and much more!
Read some excerpts from our chat… after the jump!
Watch the interview in full (above)!
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Perez: Hey everybody it’s Perez, and joined by 50 Cent. First Oprah, now Perez. Who would ever thought this?
50 Cent: That’s right, I’m moving up.
Perez: No, but people are going to — well first Oprah, now 50 with Perez. What do you think people are going to think?
50 Cent: I don’t know man, they’ll say, “50’s squashing all these people.”
Perez: Are you? Why?
50 Cent: Yeah, remember when you called me a douchebag.
Perez: I did. Well you said very homophobic things in the past. I mean, I’ve said things in the past that I regret as well. I was actually really excited for you to be here because I feel like there’s a like a parallel happening.
50 Cent: Again — there’s never — if you say things without having miles in your heart, then you don’t find — there’s not a big mental struggle for you to go and say that’s not one of my intentions.
Perez: And people can not be douchebags anymore. But I will start off with that because you did say, and repeatedly a lot of very homophobic things.
50 Cent: And when you say —
Perez: And in case you didn’t know, I’m a big homo. You knew that right?
50 Cent: What happened — [watch above].
Perez: You mean they’re going to like ask you specific questions to get a specific thing out of you?
50 Cent: Yeah, the responses they want. And he kept going, and going, and going. And I got frustrated, and just said, “Well I’m doing this anyway for four hours.” The article was only going to be this long anyway, and you got me here for four hours to try and figure how you’re going to hear something that you haven’t heard from me and —
Perez: Do you think about that actually? You went to an interview, like what can I tell people now?
50 Cent: Yeah or if they give me something, if it’s an interesting environment, and the question is there, then it already organically turns into something that’s good; it becomes entertainment. If you go in there with someone who’s just fishing, trying to find something, and you can find yourself in a frustrating space because you’re not comfortable enough to give your honest answers. You start being defensive, you start doing things that are other than your active character.
Perez: Well my thought on you in the past was that you’re a very smart man, and you were clearly, you were courting controversy, you were trying to piss people off on purpose.
50 Cent: Right, and when you get that —
Perez: And I would do that in the past too as well. I would justify my behavior — because in the past I would say some very hurtful things to people directly. And I would say, “Well, you know if they don’t like what I’m saying, they shouldn’t read my website, and it’s just entertainment, and they shouldn’t take it personally, and that’s what comes with their job.”
50 Cent: Meanwhile your website is getting bigger, more people are paying attention to it, and you’re saying, “Well you shouldn’t read my website if you don’t like what I said.” You started to be at one of those points where people have to think about what you actually were saying.
Perez: I mean, it came to the point where even they didn’t want to read it — like Jennifer Aniston told me this, things get back to her.
50 Cent: Right, right.
Perez: And even though it wasn’t my intention, it was my intention not to hurt somebody, I did hurt people. And there just came a point for me where I was like, okay, it’s just growing up I think.
50 Cent: Right. And it’s still at that point you were just giving your opinion.
Perez: Not always. Sometimes I would exaggerate my opinion on purpose or I would say something — like I’m all about putting it out there. Like I — I think the worse thing that I did, it’s bad, and I’ll tell — and I keep talking about it, because hopefully message will get out to this guy that I’m so sorry even though I don’t expect people to forgive the things that I’ve done. And sometimes saying sorry isn’t enough. I would like sometimes make fun of the children of celebrities. Like Adam Sandler specifically, and his daughter, I would post pictures of. And maybe even if I didn’t say, “Ohh, not a cute baby.” But by even just posting the photo, and drawing attention to her, people would then leave negative comments. And I know that that’s not a nice thing. But I did it anyways because in the back of my mind, oh I want people to disagree with me, I want them to leave comments, because another comment is another page view.
50 Cent: What is, what is to entertain? It’s to promote promotions.
Perez: Yeah.
50 Cent: It’s whether people love it or people hate it, they’re interested in it. It means it has a relevance that exists for those — you know like if we make a really big hit record, you know what they say, “This is going to be great at Top 40 in crossover, but this is not going to work in urban.” You know what I’m saying? You make a record that works that hip-hop culture relates to immediately, and they go, “This is going to do dope. Really good at urban eurythmic, but you’re not going to sell a lot of records because you need to do your own crossover on Top 40.” You never — it’s damn if you do, and damn if you don’t.
Perez: Everybody likes Taylor Swift.
50 Cent: Yeah, that’s works.
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Perez: You know so going back to Oprah, you were on there talking about things are different with you, you’re reading Deepak. I love Deepak. Was there something that changed for you?
50 Cent: [Watch above].
Perez: Still? No, she must.
50 Cent: She has the CD, she don’t open them. She buys the CD’s, but she leaves them in the wrapper. And it’s actually just because she knows that it actually helps the record sales, and so when she sees everybody else going to get it around the house, she’ll go get it. but she don’t —
Perez: Do you treat grandmother very well?
50 Cent: That’s my baby.
Perez: She — your grandmother raised you pretty much? Because your mom passed away when you were young?
50 Cent: I didn’t know —
Perez: And there’s some, there’s some things that have been said about your mom —
50 Cent: My mom —
Perez: Was your mom a lesbian?
50 Cent: [Watch above.]
Perez: The music scene has changed a lot since you first burst onto the scene, and were like incredibly successful. Like one of your albums sold like $9 million or something.
50 Cent: Yeah, “Get Rich or Die Tryin’.” Thirteen million in the first album.
Perez: Thirteen Million, that’s way more than $9 million. So your new song, it’s called “A New Day.”
50 Cent: Right.
Perez: And the lyrics are very reflective of who you are now. You — in the back of your mind, do you think you could still be rapping and on Top 40 radio in another ten years?
50 Cent: I’m not sure I want to be. I say this all the time, I would still be capable of creating music, but I’m not sure I would want to go out and perform it at that point. so maybe at that point I would be focused more on developing an artist. Even my ideas at that point, I would just —
Perez: Developing other art — I’m surprised you said that because I would have thought you would have said something more about like business or this, that or the other. So you always, you always wanted to be, have your hands in the music scene?
50 Cent: I mean, it’s my original passion. I really love music. I think when — it marks time, so a song could —
Perez: And it’s timeless.
50 Cent: Yeah. A song come on, and it would take you right back to that space —
Perez: Forever.
50 Cent: Yeah, and it came out what you were doing at that time period. That’s like so your older music would come on, and older person in your house would start rapping and say, “What you doing? You don’t know nothing about this.” You know what I’m saying? Because it’s that time that they were actually out and partying and at the point that the teenager now just listening to the music, they were at that point in their lives when that song was smoking hot.