S. Samuel
G-Unit general 50 Cent's 2003 debut, Get Rich Or Die Tryin', has continues to push units as the LP officially reached the eight-million-sold mark this week.
According to reports, 50’s multi-platinum selling disc ranks in the Top 5 all-time selling rap albums.
50 Cent’s 2003 breakthrough album Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ tops the 8 million mark in sales this week. It’s the fourth best-selling rap album in history, following Eminem‘s The Marshall Mathers LP (10,341,000) and The Eminem Show (9,928,000) and Nelly‘s Country Grammar (8,489,000). (All Music)
50’s 2003 album also made history during its first-week on store shelves.
By the time Get Rich finally streeted on February 6, 2003,50 Cent had become the most discussed figure in the music industry, and bootlegged or not, his initial sales figures reflected this (a record-breaking 872,000 units moved in five days, the best-selling debut album since SoundScan started its tracking system in May 1991), as did his omnipresence in the media. Late in the year, following another round of popular hits, “21 Questions” (which charted number one on the Hot 100) and “P.I.M.P.” (number three), 50 Cent made his group debut with G-Unit, Beg for Mercy. (All Music)
Last summer, Fat Joe used 50’s high-selling debut numbers to mock the rapper’s current selling capability.
“Nah, yo listen man, I don’t pay attention to 50 Cent, he’s irrelevant,” Joe told rap personality DJ Vlad. “If you want to talk about record sales, he went from selling 10 million records to not even going gold his last album so he lost nine and a half million fans. The economy’s f*cked up plus he ain’t been making good music. All we doing is making good music at the end of the day. The reason Rick Ross is still around, the reason why Fat Joe is still around is because n*ggas is making good music. He just gotta step it up and make some good music. I don’t want to dwell on 50 Cent but I’ve never seen a guy have a classic album and make such great music, his material decline so much in hip-hop history, like I be thinking he’s faking us out or something. I’ve never seen no sh*t happen like that…” (Vlad TV)
50’s last album, 2009’s Before I Self Destruct has yet to sell over 500,000 copies.
The album sold 160,000 copies in its first week of release in The United States, debuting at number 5, according to Billboard. ue to the album leaking on October 28, nearly four weeks ahead of the original release date of November 23, the album was released exclusively to itunes on November 9 and was physically released to stores on November 16, a week later. Before I Self Destruct has sold over 436,000 copies in the United States. As of January 21, 2010 the album has been certified Gold by the RIAA for shipment of more than 500,000 units. (Wikipedia)
Check out a recent 50 Cent interview below:
