The foundations of a posh London hotel are being rocked by 50 Cent, who is blasting out preview tracks from his forthcoming album, 'Curtis'. Flanked by speaker-box stacks, 50 Cent is sitting in a hotel-room chair, smiling to himself, bouncing to the beats, and rapping over each of the verses of the joints that are being played.

Scene Magazine | Interview

In between tracks the beefy rapper enthusiastically describes how each of the songs came about, and what he hopes to achieve with his third studio album. It's apparent that 50 Cent is anxious about the destiny of the new album, which follows on from his 11 million-selling 'Get Rich or Die Tryin' and its follow-up, the 9.5 million-selling 'The Massacre'. He knows the haters are about, and the knives are drawn, waiting for him to slip up. As a result, a great deal of time and investment has been put into 'Curtis'; the end results clearly show that he's back on point, after the creatively disappointing 'The Massacre'.

An hour or so later - after previewing about ten tracks from the album - we're sitting on a sofa talking about the recording of 'Curtis'. The thing that stands out most about 50 Cent (Curtis Jackson) in person is his charisma. Behind the threat of his muscular physicality and his gangsta presence, 50 Cent is a compelling communicator with a lot to say about the 'hood and the music business, not to mention he's also an astute and savvy businessman. With that in mind, it's not really surprising to hear that prior to the decision to release 'Curtis', 50 had just about finished work on another album called 'Before I Self Destruct', which he has since put on hold. He tells me what he meant by the title of that particular record.

"I think in the history of entertainment - they build entertainers in order to destroy them for the sake of entertainment. I'm at the point where I've been receiving a lot of negative energy on some levels - it's usually by the artists from New York; I receive negative energy from them, based on them wanting a shot at being #1. I'm not sure if that'll go away or if that'll continue to grow, but initially when I came out I only had issues with eight people and they were all affiliated with Murder Inc... Then it turned into issues with Jadakiss, and issues with Styles, and issues with all these other rappers. I think it's just all based on jealousy; I think they would really like to be in the position that I'm in, but they just haven't delivered the material that puts them in that space."

Throughout our conversation 50 Cent constantly refers to the expectations for the sales of 'Curtis'. It's a concern that was with him in the studio recording the album, and one which remains now, especially in the lead-up to the release of the album. Is he anxious about matching the sales of his previous albums?

"Absolutely, because in between each project I feel like an underdog again. The pressure's definitely on me and it feels like people begin to doubt me a little bit. Regardless of the all consistency I've shown to this point they say, 'do you think you can do it again?', not, 'do you think you can make a good record?'. In doing that they put me in competition with myself, and that's where the pressure comes from."

This kind of pressure surely leads to self-doubt. Is that why he started one album project, and ended up releasing a completely different one? And why did he feel the need to separate the two album projects?

"A few songs I had to take off of this record and put them on 'Before I Self Destruct'. That album is three songs away from complete. I wrote the records for that album, but then I started the concept of 'Curtis', and I just felt that this record right now would impact harder than what I set up for that one. ['Before I Self Destruct'] will be my fourth album - I signed a five album deal and within that five album deal there's a 'greatest hits' album, so it's important to me that 'Before I Self Destruct' is released on February 4th next year because it will be the anniversary of 'Get Rich Or Die Tryin'. It'll mean that I'm ending on the same day I started... and then we'll have to see whether I'll move forward making new music after that. Of course I'll make new music, but it would be the way Dr. Dre makes his albums - it'd come together organically, and it wouldn't be me in the studio feeling any pressure. It would just be me making music because I love making music."

Sasha Perera