S. Samuel
With 50 Cent's long-awaited SMS By 50 headphones finally in stores for the holidays, SOHH recently hit up SMS Audio President Brian Nohe to find out how big of an executive role Fif actually has at the company.
Claiming from their early interactions 50 proved to be determined to succeed, Nohe said the G-Unit leader is fully in control of SMS By 50.
“The only issue in the beginning was, ‘Is 50 a good business man, was he committed to the project and were the people around him good people and committed to the project,'” Nohe told SOHH. “As we got into discussions, before he bought my company which was KoNo Audio, we had all of these discussions and I had found 50 to be engaged, intelligent, focused, specific as to what he wants, a pleasant young man to work with and the team around him is just as professional and sophisticated as far as how they approached business as anyone I’ve ever been associated with. It’s a great team and he’s really a terrific gentleman. The title of chief executive officer for him in this company holds true. He is ‘our’ CEO. We report to him and he’s fully engaged.” (SOHH)
According to new reports this week, 50 is donating a portion of his headphones sales to help fight hunger.
50 Cent promises that his new line of SMS Audio headphones will beat out any current market competition, but the G-Unit CEO is also donating some of the proceeds from headphone sales to Feeding America. “Because of my Street King initiative, with every purchase there’s a meal being provided through the United Nations World Food Programme,” Fif tells MTV News. “And with this actual project, I decided I wanted to do something here in America. So for every pair of these headsets that are sold domestically and online through SMSAudio.com, 250 meals will be provided by Feeding America, which is our leading charitable organization against hunger.” (RapFix)
Last January, the rapper publicly unveiled a headphones venture by audio company Sleek.
Ludacris and 50 Cent, two rappers, actors and entrepreneurs, unveiled their own respective lines of headphones at CES this year. Ludacris showed off a 5-model line branded Soul by Ludacris, and produced by a company called Signeo. And 50 Cent unveiled his own headphones, called Sleek by 50 Cent, which will be made by H&H Imports, a company that last year signed Hulk Hogan on as the sponsor of a line of home cleaning products called PumMax. (Los Angeles Times)
After things turned sour by the spring, Fif and Sleek parted ways eventually resulting in him launching SMS By 50.
In actuality, it was G-Unit that terminated a Brand Licensing Agreement that it had entered into with Sleek, which termination automatically triggered the termination of the earlier announced tri-party agreement. However, not long after the termination of the tri-party agreement, TV Goods and 50 Cent, via his affiliate company, SMS Audio, LLC, entered into a Term Sheet for the two parties to continue joint efforts to produce and distribute a direct response television infomercial to globally market a wireless over-the-ear headphone product offered or sold by SMS that is endorsed by and/or and bears the name of “50 Cent.” Sleek is not a party to that Term Sheet. (Yahoo News)
Check out 50 Cent’s SMS By 50 NYC headphone signing below:
