50 Cent Calls Nicki Minaj ‘Alpha Female,’ Celebrates Eminem’s Impact

Lil Wayne welcomed 50 Cent during Friday’s episode of Young Money Radio.

In a wide-ranging conversation, the hip-hop tycoon opened up about executive producing Pop Smoke’s posthumous album Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon and reminisced on the first time he met the Brooklyn rapper, who showed up late to the meeting.

“When he was late, Renee—dude who works for me—goes, ‘Yo, why are you late, bro?’” recalled 50. “He said, ’50 don’t work for you. You wait for 50. You new.’ And he was like, ‘Oh my bad.’ Like he said, he said, ‘I just got caught in the trap.’ No you ain’t no trapping. You have bags and sh*t in the car you was shopping. He said, ‘Yeah, I was. I was shopping. I was shopping.’”

50 took a liking to the young MC, who was often compared to him. “I talked to him. I’m like, ‘This someone new in the league is copying your style?’ And even at that point, it’s a form of flattery. He’s copying you because your material was such an influence on him and that’s the way he learned to do it. He learned it from listening to you. It’s another thing when this n***a talking to you and you looking at him, you going ‘Nah this n***a not copying 50 Cent. This n***a is 50 Cent!’”

During the interview, 50 also brought up Nicki Minaj. Fif, who has been supportive of Nicki in the past, once again bestowed praise on the Queen, who he called an “alpha female.”

“I love me some Nicki. This n***a actually happens to come from my neighborhood. It happens to be a girl, but that n***a is tough!” he said. “She be harder than the n***a she f**k with. She be harder and she’s an alpha female! That motherf**ker tough! You see what I’m saying, son? You got to watch her or she’ll go—she’ll do something that’s pulling a move to assert herself.”

Additionally, the “Power” mogul honored his mentor Eminem, crediting him for launching his career. “Being in connection to Em, I say this shit openly, right. I don’t think you sell 13 million records without Eminem,” said 50. “Because that connection makes them understand that you understand how they fit into the culture. When they see Em, they see someone that actually grew… hip-hop culture is Black music, forget about it. Everybody around him is African-American, Proof and Denaun and everybody that’s part of D12. And he comes up and he’s that fucking good, it goes OK, I see where I fit.”

50 said his connection to Eminem helped open doors just as Dr. Dre did for Em. “And for me, on my journey, it was like, ‘You like hip-hop? Why? Who do you like?’ And they go, ‘I like Em.’ It was their first answer. So if you say you like me after, I can see why you got turned on to me considering I’m down with Em and Dre. Dre would make the credibility in Em as a foundation. That connection would mean credibility. This guy’s from N.W.A.”

Their partnership was fruitful, and 50’s debut Get Rich or Die Tryin’ sold millions out the gate. “When I come and I connect to it, it allows you to—my man, you had to be Tupac, make a double CD, and die in the process to go down as an African-American artist in the hip-hop culture. So when I come through and I do 13 million records for the first album, it creates the kind of confusion you couldn’t believe.”

In addition to 50, Lil Wayne was joined by special guests Naomi Campbell and Whoopi Goldberg during Friday’s episode of Young Money Radio.