50 Cent was spreading nothing but positivity during Friday night's episode of Young Money Radio, as he spoke to Lil Wayne about executive producing the late Pop Smoke's posthumous album, Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon, coming up under Eminem, and admiring "alpha female" Nicki Minaj. During his chat with Wayne, Fif recalled the first time he ever met Pop, who was tragically killed back in February.
“When he was late, Renee—dude who works for me—goes, ‘Yo, why are you late, bro?'” he remembered. “He said, ’50 don’t work for you. You wait for 50. You new.’ And he was like, ‘Oh my bad.’ Like he said, ‘I just got caught in the trap.’ No you ain’t no trapping. You have bags and sh*t in the car you was shopping. He said, ‘Yeah, I was. I was shopping. I was shopping.''' He also addressed the frequent comparisons made between him and Pop. “I talked to him. I’m like, ‘This someone new in the league is copying your style?’ And even at that point, it’s a form of flattery. He’s copying you because your material was such an influence on him and that’s the way he learned to do it. He learned it from listening to you. It’s another thing when this n***a talking to you and you looking at him, you going ‘Nah this n***a not copying 50 Cent. This n***a is 50 Cent!'”
The conversation then steered toward Nicki Minaj, whom Fif has always been supportive of. “I love me some Nicki," he noted. "This n***a actually happens to come from my neighbourhood. It happens to be a girl, but that n***a is tough! She be harder than the n***a she f*ck with. She be harder and she’s an alpha female! That motherf*cker tough! You see what I’m saying, son? You got to watch her or she’ll go—she’ll do something that’s pulling a move to assert herself.”
Fif also showered praise on Eminem, whom he credits for launching his career. “Being in connection to Em, I say this sh*t openly, right. I don’t think you sell 13 million records without Eminem,” he said. “Because that connection makes them understand that you understand how they fit into the culture. When they see Em, they see someone that actually grew up…hip-hop culture is Black music, forget about it. Everybody around him is African-American, Proof and Denaun and everybody that’s part of D12. And he comes up and he’s that f*cking good, it goes OK, I see where I fit.” Watch their full conversation below: