KANYE EMBARASSES 50 CENT IN SALES RACE

By Nick Kaoma

What a week it has been for Kanye West. The Chicago native appeared in a dozen late night TV shows and award ceremonies, buoyed by the fact that his third album, Graduation, had outsold 50 Cent’s Curtis on the first day of release, a feat that would have previously been seen as impossible considering Fitty’s stupendous commercial pull.

On the first day of release, September 11, Kanye shifted more than 470 000 units, a ridiculous amount for a single day considering that the highest selling hip hop album of the year, T.I.’s T.I. vs. T.I.P, scanned around the same amount during the course for an entire week.

Furthermore, news has just come in from the other side of the Atlantic that Kanye has officially bitch-slapped the egotistical loudmouth with sales that will make you weep. Graduation, after a successful week of campaigning and propelled by the singles Stronger and Can’t Tell Me Nothing, has posted first week sales of….wait for it….. 957 000 copies, an astronomical figure considering that the SoundScan King 50 Cent only managed to pimp consumers with 691 000 copies of Curtis.

In typical bully fashion, 50 Cent has rejected these figures and has accused Def Jam, Kanye’s record label of manipulating the record sales of Graduation. Hooooww Fitty, can’t you just take it like man? It shows that underneath that heavy-toned body and bulletproof vest, there lies a naïve and delusional Curtis Jackson that seems to have lost touch with the real world.

According to New York's Daily News, 50 Cent made the accusations during an interview with British based magazine Uncut.

"He's never had a fraction of the sales 50 Cent has," Fif said. "They could have only one scan and have it count four times. West's entire career hasn't sold half what I sold on my first album.” Aaaah, someone is bitter over the ass-whooping.
Billboard's Geoff Mayfield countered 50's claims saying that there is a slim chance that Def Jam would have doctored the sales figures.

"The people who built SoundScan put safeguards in place to track sales that don't look kosher," Mayfield explained.

The total for West's Graduation is the largest by any album since 50 Cent's The Massacre opened with 1.1 million copies in March 2005. West's own August 2005 album, Late Registration, was the last album to surpass 800,000 copies when it began with 860,000.

Amidst all this euphoria and unguarded mayhem, it is difficult to realize who is the Architect behind this momentary downfall of Curtis Jackson.

Jigga - yes you read right - Jay-Z sat down with his underlings in the plush offices of Universal Records and put in motion a marketing tactic that has clearly outwitted the whole of G-Unit Records and its head honcho.

Since 50 entered the game, he has thrown a number of under-the-belt jabs at your boy HOV, trying relentlessly to annoy him and let him know that a new contender for the throne was in the ring. Fair enough, every King deserves to be challenged but where 50 got it wrong is that Jigga is more than just a king in the game; he’s a hip hop immortal amongst mortals. And that is one undisputable fact!

Like a true chess player that he is, Mr. Shawn Carter opted to beat 50 by using one of his pawns instead of himself; who better to do that than Kanye, a complete opposite of what 50 Cent stands for. In the current hip hop climate where rappers are being cited and reprimanded for misogynistic and violent lyrics, HOV got it spot-on, as Middle America would be more than willing to embrace Kanye’s pop and conceptual sensibilities over 50’s thuggerish, gun-tooting persona. So when Interscope Records announced September 11 as the day that 50’s third album Curtis would be dropping, Jay quickly got ‘Ye to wrap up his project so that he could contest that day with 50, mano a mano, comprende?

When 50 heard this, he thought Jay was bluffing and quickly went to radio and snobbishly urged Jigga to move Kanye to another date so as to avoid a beatdown. Jigga, of course, stood his ground and insisted that Graduation would drop on the same day as Curtis, thereby initiating the greatest sales contest in hip hop history. From an obtuse angle, one could have been forgiven for calling Jigga crazy, delusional or naïve, but considering the way things have panned out, he clearly had a couple of aces up his sleeve that we were not aware of.

Such sublime marketing tactics, explain why Columbia Records and others are reportedly in negotiations to secure his executive services and lure him away from Def Jam.

With everything said and done, and the dust has settled, there is only one BIG winner in all of this. The White Man! Yeah, you read me right. All the worldwide sales that will accrue from Graduation and Curtis will be swiftly transferred to the obese bank accounts of Universal Records, as they own both artists, and thereafter moved across the Atlantic to the offices of Vivendi Universal in France, which owns the mammoth record label.

Like Kanye himself said on All Falls Down, “We'll buy a lot of clothes when we don't really need em/ Cause they make us hate ourself and love they wealth/ Drug dealer buy Jordans, crackhead buy crack/ And a white man gets paid off of all of that.”

One.

[Ed's note: check out Encore next week for Lee Kasumba's comprehensive review of Kanye West's Graduation.]