Tea Time

Jacked from a random message board

Have you seen the word around the blogs that "Lloyd Banks is currently unsigned"? Notice how 50 & Banks are almost never at the same events anymore, and haven't been for quite a few years? Banks' last album was brilliant, was released on the same day as Kanye's "Dark Fantasy" and Nicki's "Pink Friday" yet didn't do 1/3 of the numbers that his first album did. Sure, you can blame 'the industry not being what it was,' but that's only partly true. If it were fully true, why would Kanye's and Nicki's albums be gold and platinum, but Banks' album go double-wood?

Here's the short answer: 50 cut off his 'old friend's' funding. 50 knows that, of the two 'soldiers' in the Unit, Banks is clearly the superior of the two, and could have a long and somewhat successful career if he ever got out of his 'soldier' mentality. But from what I've been told, Banks started to see who 50 really was when his father died - 50 couldn't even be bothered to show up to the funeral, then had the nerve to bitch and complain that Banks wasn't doing the necessary promotion needed for the second album. Later on, 50 apologized for not being there for Banks when he needed him, but that was a case of 'too little too late.' 50's philosophy was 'starve him to death,' and there was some legitimacy to that philosophy [because Banks has a habit of spending his money on drugs and video hoes, which is why he almost got jammed up with a video hoe a few months back - and Banks can be more than a little bit of an arrogant jerk to people he views as 'beneath him'], but the overall impression in the industry about 50 doing that is that he has no loyalty to anyone. Because if he can do that to one of his oldest friends, he can do that to anybody. The only reason he doesn't do it to Tony Yayo [who is an absolute loser, can't rap worth a shit] is because Yayo, as someone else on here mentioned, has a lot, and I do mean a lot, of dirt on 50. Even that whole 'energy drink' shit that 50 is doing is nothing more than face-washing for all the dirt he's done. But those in the industry really see through it.

Don’t you think it's odd that there's all this money invested in his film company, but not a single film has received major distribution, and the one film that received some level of publicity is plagued by troubles up, down, and sideways? Do you think it's odd that the man has released quite a few singles (two, by my count) from his purported album, but can't find any radio traction? Do you think it's odd that, knowing that when Banks did the same thing with "Beamer, Benz or Bentley" independently - that is, when he had no label deal with EMI - he sold 500k copies of the single, but the minute Banks lined himself back up with 50's cause for the album, he immediately got the air let out of his tires? Do you think it's odd that 50 Cent used to never do the nightclub circuit for promotion after he got "put on," but now that's all he seems to be doing for something that's supposedly as "noble" of a cause as his "heal the world, make it a better place" energy drink?