Somebody, Show Him the Door

Everybody, please remind Fiddy he lost the bet. In the highly hyped face-off with fellow rapper and rival Kanye West, Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson came in second - and if we are to take him seriously, the MTV VMAs were the last time we had the privilege of seeing him perform live. Man, if I had known I would have shed some tears - and maybe even paid attention to his performance, but how was I to suspect the king of hip hop was going down, down, down? Joke - this was in fact expected ever since tracks from both Fiddy's "Curtis" and Wests's "Graduation" were leaked to the Internet. So, 50 Cent should cut his losses, count his dough, say his goodbyes and stop recording single tracks.

According to Billboard, SoundScan Building Chart indicates Tuesday sales of 437,000 for West's "Graduation" and 310,000 for 50 Cent's new album "Curtis". West's album is poised to surpass 750,000 units by the end of the week. This comes as no surprise, seeing how - strictly from the point of view of style and originality - "Graduation" is much more complex and daring. West, we have to remember, is no stranger to such success. His last album, "Late Registration" (released in 2005) came out at No. 1 on The Billboard 200 with opening sales of 860,000 copies and led the chart for two weeks.

What is even more humiliating for Fiddy is the fact that he was the one who started this whole "war" by going live praising his own virtues and making snide comments at the expense of his rival. What did that Justin thing sound like? Oh, yes, 'what goes around comes around' and it seems to have come around rather hard for him.

And just to prove we were right when we thought he's a bit of a coward, Fiddy made a 180 and is now blaming his label, Interscope, for losing the sales war with Kanye. "To be honest, the process of selling this record hasn't been fun" he said when interviewed in a radio program. "I'm happy with the performance, but I'm not happy with the set up. We had conference calls and after we created this plan, nobody actually had a plan. It was the label. They're dropping the ball all over the place. I'll release my next album and then I'm a free agent".

Yes, now THAT sounds like him - cocky, blaming others for him coming in second and with just ridiculous amounts of arrogance. Well, he knows where the door is - and we know he knows - so I'm really looking forward to see how far he's willing to push the blame game. It will be fun to watch, if anything.