Fantastic Day For Hip-Hop

Note: I've been sitting on this story for about 2 weeks now, so apologies to those for which this is old news. When I heard Jigga recently commented on the story, I figured the time was right to blog it up.

According to Jigga, otherwise known as Jay-Z, Hov, etc. etc., September 11th, 2007 is going to be a "Fantastic Day For Hip-Hop". When Jay-Z says or does something, people take notice. Anyway, in about 6 weeks two highly anticipated records arrive in music stores as both Kanye West and 50 Cent drop their new records on the exact same day. Yes, you guessed it, that day will be Tuesday September 11th.

Several tracks from Kanye's new effort have already gotten some strong airplay. Those pre-release singles include "Can't Tell Me Nothing" and "Stronger". On the other hand, 50 pre-released "Straight to the Bank" and "Amusement Park", but neither soared in the charts. "Straight to the Bank" peaked at No. 32 while "Amusement Park" reached No. 121. "I Get Money" recently came out, but that 50 track hasn't broken into the Top 40.

Kanye was first to pick September 11th as the drop day of his record called "Graduation". For those people that remember Kanye's other records, his first one was called, "College Dropout" while the second one came out under the title, "Late Registration". Does that mean that record 4 will be called "Work" or "Masters Degree"?

50's record was supposed to come out back in June, but after the weak response to his pre-released singles, the entire record was sent back to the studios for some adjustments or fine-tuning. 50 and his people then announced his record would come out on September 4th. When they learned Kanye was dropping his on September 11th, 50 changed his drop date for the third time. Maybe 3 times will be a charm in terms of record sales…

Speaking of threesomes, 50's record also has gone by 3 different names. The record will drop as "Curtis". Originally, 50 wanted to call it, "Before I Self-Destruct", since "that could happen" according to 50. Then the name was changed to "Curtis, S.S.K.". Curtis is 50's real first name. "S.S.K." stands for "Sound Scan Killa" which was basically 50's attempt to say that he was going to sell a lot of records (Nielsen SoundScan tracks sales data for singles, albums, and music video products for Billboard and other music industry companies and television channels). After realizing that a weak initial response to his pre-releases might signal weak record sales, the S.S.K. part got removed to prevent major embarrassment.

Many fans of both rappers have circled the 11th of September as a day to hit music stores. Not that either rapper needs more publicity with the many articles already in print about this "duel", but neither Kanye or 50 has done any trash-talking. To the contrary, a couple of weeks ago Kanye did an interview with Hot 97. During the interview, Kanye said that his favorite new song was 50 Cent's "I Get Money".

One has to wonder why 50 would change the release date of his record by one week knowing that Kanye was dropping then too. No known beef exists between the two. The only thing I can remember is that several years back 50 said he disagreed with what Kanye said during the Hurricane Katrina Telethon about George Bush. 50 complimented Bush by saying he was a "gangsta" and that 50 saw some of himself in Bush.

When asked whom he thought would win in terms of sales, Kanye basically said he was really excited about being involved with such a big day, and that he would rather compete in something like this and finish number 2 than not be involved at all. Of course, if you know of Kanye West it will come as no surprise that Kanye mentioned elsewhere that he was "ready to take over the world again" with his "Graduation" record.

If I had to pick a winner, I'd go with 50. His fans have no doubt seen or heard about the record/single bashing and I think they're gonna come out in full force to support him. I won't be buying both. I buy very few physical CDs, but I have Kanye's first two in plastic and most likely will be picking up number 3 around the middle of September.

We'll see how it plays out. But, now you know the date. Will you be out there on day 1 or any day for that matter to pick up one of these rapper's records?