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50 Cent is telling anyone who’ll listen that he’s pissed off at MTV and BET for forcing a name change on his new single, the Akon collaboration/best track on Curtis “I Still Kill,” in order for it to get airtime on the two stations’ video shows. In response to the song being rechristened “I Still Will” by the higher-ups at Viacom, 50 actually made kind of an astute point about the channels’ malleable standards regarding the English language, although he couched it in so much “look at me, ma, I’m dangerous! rhetoric that it’s impossible to not roll your eyes at the whole thing.
I don’t think they have a problem with the group the Killers being called the Killers … I don’t think anyone’s protesting that Guns N’ Roses is called Guns N’ Roses. I just think that their perception of me is dark, so they’re going to ask for those things to be changed, you know what I mean?
Well, the last time Guns N’ Roses put out an album, the standards and practices department at MTV was a lot more, uh, lenient, so their name is probably grandfathered in. But if I were him, I’d save my complaints for when MTV starts cutting arbitrary nouns from his songs, instead of words that they’re obviously running scared from. Or maybe he should just change all his references to “killing” to “being drunk,” since the higher-ups over there have no problem with that sort of thing.
50 is just mad that the only potential hit left on his album is one that he had to know while making it would have to be edited for radio play (the fact that the chorus now goes “I still will chill” is pretty funny, too).
The point he makes about the double standard for song titles and artist names is interesting, but I dunno if it holds water. Ghostface dropped the “Killah” from his name for a couple years there, but MTV and radio had no problem saying his full name before and after that, and Murder Inc. became “The Inc.” by their own choice. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when Def Jam starts promoting Uncle Murder’s album (although I’m guessing they won’t bother trying to get a song like “Bullet Bullet” on MTV).
I think the kinda-valid point is overshadowing the martyr complex here. Is there anyone out there that DOESN’T think MTV is a joke?