Thirty Three Jones | Desktop Site
Forbes recently put out their list of the top 100 most powerful celebrities and your boy 50 Cent made the top 10. Fifty was the only rapper on the list, though Puff did come in at #79. No love for Def Jam on this list, as neither Jay-Z nor Russell Simmons are on it. The list was created by using "a combination of factors including income, Web references as calculated by Google, press clips as compiled by Lexis/Nexis, TV/radio mentions from Factiva and the number of times a celebrity's face has appeared on the cover of 26 major consumer magazines. Earnings estimates are for June 2005 to June 2006 and are dollars earned solely from entertainment income." You can see the list here.
Even though he didn't release an album during this time period (June 2005-June 2006), Forbes says 50 managed to pull in $41 Million, through "album sales and ringtones". At my old company, when our company began selling ringtones as a last ditch effort to raise money, my boss tried to tell me that ringtones were a $6 billion industry. At the time, I thought he just made that figure up to make all of the employees feel better about our dire financial situation, but apparently there was some validity to that statement. Our company still went into the tank, but maybe things would have been different if Fifty was doing the ringtones for us. Anyways...
I still think 50 Cent's lyrical abilities have dropped off significantly since he signed with Aftermath (listen to Guess Who's Back and then The Massacre back-to-back, and tell me I'm wrong), and I think too much of his success comes from his manufactured former-drug-dealer-shot-nine-times image that the kids all love, but its hard not to respect his financial game. He previously made the outrageous claim that he was pulling in more than $100 million annually, but it looks like he is coming closer to that goal. With two movies on the horizon, a Lloyd Banks album, a Game album (which he still gets a cut from) and his own solo album coming out this year, he'll probably end up on the next Forbes list as well.
Here are a couple of freestyles from 50 Cent:
50 Cent Freestyle over Eminem beat
50 Cent Freestyle over Black Rob/Whoa beat
If you don't already have it, go pick up 50 Cent's best album.
6/19/2006 10:09:06 AM posted by Fresh