S. Samuel
With over five million followers and counting, G-Unit's 50 Cent has opened up about his love for social networking tool Twitter and his stance on how entertainers utilize it.
When asked about the tendency of his tweets getting picked up and ran as stories, 50 gave Twitter accolades for being a direct connection to fans.
“I think it’s great. I think it allows you the ability to make a public statement from your telephone,” 50 explained when asked about his love for Twitter. “It allows you to reach your base, the people who have interest in your material or what you’re doing, at any time — I think entertainers are supposed to entertain on it versus provide more of their personal lives insight. But, it’s cool. Everybody utilizes it differently.” (CNN)
Last year, G-Unit’s DJ Whoo Kid said 50’s purchase of a new phone ultimately sparked his Twitter obsession.
“I think he got the new iPhone and they put the [Twitter] app on there. And then [Tony] Yayo was talking about ‘go on’ and he just started wildin’ out. Once he saw how easy it was, that was it. Because before, he had a Blackberry, he didn’t really care too much about going online. Whatever he needed to promote, he had somebody promoting it. But now he has it in the palm of his hands, and he’s going bezerk. He cursed me out on there like twice. I’m like a f*cking human punching bag on Twitter. But it’s all good because the more they curse me out, the more followers I get…This is like a nightmare now that he has 3 million followers, and I’m assuming he’s trying to break the 5 million follower capacity. But making him mad and he has Twitter is a nightmare , so I would suggest not to go at him too tough. Leave him alone. Because basically whatever he says on Twitter, everybody knows.” (VIBE)
In September 2010, 50 described his new interest in Twitter.
“You know what’s interesting? I look at that platform as another place to express yourself in a different way, to entertain,” he said in an interview. “Not necessarily to create a perception of your actual character, but to be entertaining. When other people used it, it was boring because they were trying to be safe, be politically correct. They gave you the presentation they were taught to give you after they were prepped for publicity. What I gave you was some of the things I’ve seen that were entertaining topic-wise — things that made me laugh. I think it’s healthy to smile. Even though I may have the persona as one of the darkest people in hip-hop culture, you seen me smile as often as — probably more often as — somebody you seen placed in that category.” (MTV)
Although 50 appears to run his own account these days, in 2009, Fif associate Chris Romero admitted his involvement on the rapper’s social application.
On March 1, he shared this insight with the more than 200,000 people who follow him: “My ambition leads me through a tunnel that never ends.” Those were 50 Cent’s words, but it was not exactly him tweeting. Rather, it was Chris Romero, known as Broadway, the director of the rapper’s Web empire, who typed in those words after reading them in an interview. “He doesn’t actually use Twitter,” Mr. Romero said of 50 Cent, whose real name is Curtis Jackson III, “but the energy of it is all him.” (New York Times)
Check out 50 Cent’s interview below:
