Rapper 50 Cent claims Donald Trump’s campaign offered him $3 million to perform at his rally at Madison Square Garden, but he turned it down.
The musician, who has not formally endorsed the former president but is known to support him, said he tried to avoid politics.
Trump held a massive and controversial rally in New York City on Sunday to conclude his presidential campaign.
“I got a call on Sunday… they offered me $3 million,” 50 Cent, real name Curtis Jackson, told The Breakfast Club on 105.1 FM in New York on Tuesday.
Rapper 50 Cent claims Donald Trump’s campaign offered him $3 million to perform at his Madison Square Garden rally, but he turned it down
Whether he literally meant that the campaign called him at 11 a.m. on Sunday, or whether he contacted him earlier about it, was unclear.
The hosts asked if they were also offering him money to perform at the Republican National Convention in July and he nodded his head and said “mmhmm.”
Jackson said neither conversation got very far because he was not interested in performing or appearing at either political event.
“I’m afraid of politics … because if you do get involved in it, no matter how you feel, someone will passionately disagree with you,” he said.
‘I stay away from religion, I stay away from politics.’
Jackson then pulled Kanye West into the conversation by reducing the fellow rapper’s hundreds of vicious anti-Semitic rants to mere “religion” and “politics.”
“That’s the formula for the confusion that Kanye sent to Japan,” he said.
‘He has said something about both matters (religion and politics), and now he can only go to Japan. So I don’t want to go into that.’
Trump held a massive and controversial rally in New York City on Sunday to conclude his presidential campaign
Jackson said Kayne West was forced to move to Japan (pictured in Narita, Japan, in June) because “something said about both things (religion and politics)”
The radio hosts then pranked him by saying they had to let him go because Vice President Kamala Harris was on the line.
“Would you like to say hello?” they said.
‘Why are you trying to drag me into this? I thought we were cool,” Jackson replied.
He got up to walk away, but sat back down when the hosts all laughed and he realized it was a joke.
Jackson has spoken positively about Trump in the past, once saying “maybe Trump is the answer” in response to a news article about the migrant crisis.
“I think Trump will be president again, but I’m not going to say,” he wrote on Twitter in March.
Then in June, he said that many black men “identified with Trump” because “they had RICO charges [too]’.
Jackson’s 2003 song Many Men became something of an anthem among MAGA believers after Trump walked to the stage to it at his first rally after the July 13 assassination attempt.
‘Many men wish me death. Blood in my eye, dawg, and I can’t see, I’m trying to be what I’m meant to be,” is one of the lines of the song.
Jackson has spoken positively about Trump in the past, once saying “maybe Trump is the answer” in response to a news article about the migrant crisis
The rapper later explained how streaming for Many Men increased dramatically after the rally.
‘He says fight. Okay. And that’s exactly what I did after I got shot. I just went into fight mode. People identify with it that way,” he said.
Jackson came closest to boosting support for Trump in 2020 when he backed out over an incorrect report that New York residents could be taxed at 62 percent under Joe Biden.
‘WHAT THE F**K! (VOTE FOR TRUMP) I’m out. F**K NEW YORK The KNICKS never win anyway. I don’t care if Trump doesn’t like black people. 62% are you crazy,” he wrote at the time.
“I don’t want to be 20 cents.”
Jackson realized his mistake with the help of his ex-girlfriend Chelsea Handler, and withdrew his support a few weeks later.
F**k Donald Trump, I never liked him. As far as I know he framed me and had my friend Angel Fernandez killed, but that’s history. LOL,” he wrote.