50 Cent is known as a wildcard when it comes to rap beefs. After all, he came into the game as hungry as any new artist and wanted to make a name for himself. With that in mind, he went as far as initiating a short-lived beef with JAY-Z in the early 2000s. Fif included Hov’s name in a list of rappers he dissed on a song called “How To Rob.” Around the same time, 50 and Ja Rule were in deep with their beef and the G-Unit general found a way to stay afloat by any means necessary. Anybody who stood next to Ja got a personal lyrical exercise from Fif almost immediately — Fat Joe included.
Reflecting on the beef almost 20 years later, 50 Cent feels that he was “buggin” for going to war with Joey and anyone else who aligned themselves with Ja. “There’s an element, a part of our culture that I’m aware of it because I am it,” he said in a new interview with Rolling Stone. “Your Lil Durks, your NBA YoungBoys, the whole surrounding cast of that. It almost splits our culture in half because when you cool with one, you can’t work with the other.
“I was using the same thinking in the very beginning of my career because it’s just the thinking you would use in the environment. If anybody went next to Ja Rule, I’d jump on the person who featured with them, anybody who was faintly near them — ’cause I put him on life support and you want to go resuscitate him. So that energy, later you look at it and you go, ‘I was buggin.’”
Hopefully, one day, 50 and Ja Rule can let bygones be bygones. If Gucci Mane and Jeezy can do it, anything is possible.