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Young Buck.
It might be Diddy's mantra but you may as well go ahead and
apply it to 50 Cent as well because he can't stop and won't
stop. Fresh off starring in his semi-autobiographical film,
releasing a volume of memoirs and selling almost 10 million
copies of his second album worldwide, he's set to expand the
G-Unit empire to include a horde of new members, a video game,
a line of bottled water - oh, and he's promised to release an
album by every artist on the G-Unit roster.
You'd think this would leave him prey to the perils of overexposure, but not according to G-Unit member and head of G-Unit South, Young Buck: "This is what people have been asking for, more of 50 Cent, more of G-Unit. So we're just trying to give the fans what they're asking for when we do this."
Australian fans have had to hold on for a little bit longer than most, though, after the Office for Film and Literature Classification originally refused the game classification for being too violent (unlike the States, there is no R18+ rating here), a claim that Buck sees as hypocritical.
"You see violence everywhere these days," he snarls. "There's posters for movies with guns that kids see in broad daylight and it's OK in movies like 'The Terminator', but when it's 50 Cent or G-Unit people all of a sudden say it's too violent."
The game itself follows 50 Cent as he forges a bloody path through New York's seedy underworld with the help of his G-Unit cohorts and two of his benefactors, Dr. Dre and Eminem (playing a, ahem, "shady" detective) to a soundtrack of album cuts and exclusive new material.
Surprisingly, these sidekicks play more than just a token role, with Buck estimating that "overall, we're probably involved in about 80% of the game. We got to choose our special moves that our characters can do and what they look like, and we did all the voiceovers for them."
Part of the 'we' that he mentions is Tony Yayo, the original G-Unit member who has been conspicuously absent from a number of projects. He only appeared twice on the group's debut album due to his incarceration and missed out on the recent Australian tour because he's currently under house arrest.
When Young Buck's album was released before his, despite the fact that he was a much newer addition to the group, some fans cried foul but Buck insists that there's no beef between the two.
"He couldn't do much on the G-Unit album because of his situation at the time, and I released my album so people were still talking about the G-Unit name. Then, when he came out it was ready for him to do his record."
With all the ongoing feuds G-Unit is involved in, it's fortunate there are no internal problems, but while the Talk Of New York doesn't hold back in his venomous attacks, it's rare to see Young Buck embroiled in these verbal battles. In fact, apart from a recent court case for allegedly stabbing a man who sucker punched Dr. Dre at an awards night last year (which is well and truly over judging by his joyful cry of "I'm free!" when the topic is brought up) you'll hardly find anything in the way of controversy.
"I try to stay out of that mostly," he explains "but everyone knows that I'm 100% with 50 and with G-Unit. You might hear [former G-Unit artist The Game] talking about 50 or Yayo or Banks but you don't hear my name; but he knows why that is and I know why that is."
Though he's not forthcoming with any more information, you could hardly accuse G-Unit of running a closed shop: they're more than happy to put everything out there for all to see and, love it or hate it, it looks like they just may be here to stay.
Alexis Buxton-Collins
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Vivendi/Universal release '50 Cent: Bulletproof' for Playstation 2 and Xbox on Thurs 6 April.
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