Last night, a man was shot outside of Hot 97. This would be scary in most cases, but the interesting thing is that the victim is a part of 50 Cent's entourage, and this happened while the rapper, who was famously shot multiple times and lived to tell and get rich, was inside. Now, the police are not sure if there is a connection between the shooting and 50 Cent, but 50 Cent was making an announcement on the radio:
The rapper was being interviewed live on the air when the shooting happened at about 10 p.m. He had just made the unexpected announcement that he was kicking out his protege The Game from his crew, G-Unit, for being disloyal.
Dunh dunh DUNH. The victim was shot in the leg and is in stable condition; The Game's album, The Documentary, is the number 1 album in the country. And this has not been a good year for Hot 97. Not only is Lil' Kim's trial for allegedly lying to a grand jury about the 2001 shooting outside Hot 97 going on now, people are still fuming about the morning show's "tsunami song." Anyway, a cynical person would say that this shooting is going to give 50 Cent more publicity for his new album, which comes out on Thursday, but given that 50 is one of the biggest stars out there, Gothamist doubts it was a record label marketing ploy.
Newsweek interviews 50 Cent this week. And, semi-tangentially, Sasha Frere-Jones looks at cellphone ringtones in The New Yorker, and noted, "A kid I met on the subway told me that his mother doesn’t like his new 50 Cent ringtone, Candy Shop, not because it features explicitly sexual rhymes but because it’s not as cool as In Da Club, a previous 50 Cent ringtone, which received Billboard’s first Ringtone of the Year award, in 2004."
