50 Cent: Taking Care of Business

The underwhelming response he heard on air and read online forced him back into the studio to record eight new tracks for Curtis, which was originally slated for late June. For the first time in years, he appears vulnerable. "I've had so much success in such a short period that people don't realize I'm only on my third album," he says. "So while I still feel like I haven't peaked, other people may feel like I have and it's time for something new. There's a point when all artists meet with resistance, and you either meet that resistance back or you fade away."

The first track that breathed some much-needed life into Curtis was "I Get Money," where the two sides of 50 — the artist and the businessman — merged in boasts like "I took a quarter-water/Sold it in bottles for two bucks/Coca-Cola came and bought it for billions/What the fuck?" It was followed by the Timbaland-produced "AYO Technology," with Justin Timberlake singing the hook. 50 says simplicity was the key to the songs' successes. "At a time when records like 'This Is Why I'm Hot,' 'A Bay Bay,' 'Party Like a Rock Star' and 'Wipe Me Down' are hot, it indicates to me that people don't want to think. They want to hear records with really good production, with catchy content and not a lot of complexity."

It seems he has little problem compromising his creativity if it means that his music will sell. He is a businessman, and the numbers, 50 argues, rarely lie. "When artists say stuff like 'It doesn't matter if my album sells, I make music for me,' that's a total cop-out, that's nonsense, that's what an artist says when he feels himself close to failing and he knows the general public is not going to embrace the material. Have you ever heard me say something like that? 'I made it for me.'" He chuckles. "If you made it for you, then keep it for yourself to hear."

He says that in the past four years, he's been on vacation only once. "I went to Turks and Caicos," he says. "I just wanted to get away, have nobody bother me, but with all that quiet I started thinking of business ideas...." Two days later he was on a flight back to the States.

"I never got into it for the music," 50 told Forbes not long ago. "I got into it for the business." The VitaminWater deal has proved to be his biggest payoff yet — one that left even Kanye West envious. "When I say, 'Wait till I get my money right,'" West says, referring to a lyric from the first single from Graduation, "Can't Tell Me Nothing," "people might look at me like 'Yo, you already got your money right.' But when I see 50 do the VitaminWater, I knew I didn't have my money quite right enough."

Before the Coca-Cola deal, 50 was earning $7 million annually from his investment in VitaminWater. His manager, Chris Lighty, says that a more natural brand extension for him would have been liquor: "Everyone else was thinking about being the next Patrón." But 50 had little interest in helping market a premium brand. "He says he'd rather be a Volkswagen than a Bentley," Lighty says. "You know why? Because Volkswagen owns Bentley." Mass over flash.

Citing a nondisclosure agreement, 50 won't reveal how much he made from the deal. "Let's just say that it wouldn't be a tragedy if people didn't buy my record," he says. "I wouldn't faint on the floor and start kicking." He laughs long and hard. He likes to laugh and he smiles easily, surprising given that in photos he almost always looks menacing. In real life he is anything but. He greets women with hugs and men with friendly pounds. When he is in a pleasant mood, the jokes runneth over. According to those who know him best, you get out of 50 what you give him. "You give him shade," says Lighty, "he'll give you shade. You give him the hand, he'll give you a hand, invite you to the party, tell jokes and be very endearing."