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50 Cent - Emotional
Gawker ran an article the other day about Nelly Furtado's decision to donate a $1,000,000 payment she had received from the Qaddafi family for a 45 minute performance in Italy back in 2007 in light of what's been going on in Libya recently. The point could be made that Qaddafi was just as reprehensible when Furtado accepted the money in 2007 as he is today, but nevertheless I was reminded me of 50 Cent's Emotional, in which he boasted at the end of the song that he received $500,000 Qaddafi after a 30 minute performance of his own in Venice:
"Shoutout to Qaddafi and his sons for having us out in Venice. I appreciate the half a mil' baby. For 30 minutes? Anytime."
There's certainly no shortage of rumors about various rappers and labels accepting money from shady sources, of course. Jay-Z claims Roc-A-Fella was founded off of drug money, Bad Boy has long been alleged to have benefited from ties to BMF, and Murder Inc had well documented ties to Supreme Mcgriff. So an argument could be made that it is, perhaps, unfair to single out 50 Cent. Accepting money from an oppressive dictator, however, would seem to raise (or lower) the bar on what's become an acceptable source for a paycheck. Maybe I'm out of line, but is it unreasonable to hold a multimillionaire to some level of accountability for the people he accepts money from? Or at the very least expect him to have the good sense not to brag about it?
3/2/2011 5:30:00 PM posted by Fresh