When 50 Cent first arose on the scene in New York, he caused a considerable disturbance. From Roc-A-Fella to Ruff Ryders, the Queens emcee and his crew, G-Unit, began overshadowing specific individuals. Furthermore, the lyricist (real name Curtis Jackson) began antagonising his peers and used his power to talk about them.
One of Jackson’s most well-known feuds when he first broke into the mainstream was with Ja Rule. The ‘Always On Time’ rhymer and co-founder of Murder Inc. began as a misunderstanding between two dominant rappers bubbled over and became a war of crews.
Led by 50 Cent and Ja Rule, respectively, G-Unit and Murder Inc. were two collectives gunning for the same crown and saw a lot of different members roped into the war, and one of Ja Rule’s female artists’ was one of them.
In the early 2000s, Murder Inc. had some female artists. Aside from the renowned vocalist Ashanti, the label also boasted Charli Baltimore, an emcee. However, during the label’s battle with G-Unit, Baltimore took it upon herself to record an entire album aimed at 50 Cent.
During the BET docu-series The Murder Inc. Story, Baltimore detailed the story behind the album, explaining, “Irv [Gotti] wanted us to just ignore the situation ’cause he felt like we were untouchable. I recorded a whole mixtape going at 50 that Irv kinda shut down.”
Charli, the emcee behind tracks such as ‘Money’ and ‘Stand Up’ in the late 1990s, signed with Irv Gotti’s Murder Inc. label in 2002. She unveiled that at the time, she disagreed with Irv’s reasoning of not wanting to feed into “new artists shitting on us to give [50 Cent] more energy.”
Baltimore concluded, “I didn’t feel like that’s how we should handle it because, at that point, 50 was blowing up in the street. That was our social media back then.” However, Irv Gotti prevented the release of the diss project.
