2003: Public Interaction and Private Tensions
Diddy presented 50 with a Best Rap Video award for “In Da Club” at the VMAs in 2003, and the vibe was warm and friendly.
But tensions surfaced two years later, as 50 attempted to sign Mase to his G-Unit, who reportedly wanted out of his Bad Boy deal. Negotiations soon fell apart, and 50 later called Diddy “unreasonable” and a “sucker” for allegedly blocking the deal.
“[Mase] created some material that I was excited about, and when we came back to try to make the deal, me and Puff … [Diddy] was being unreasonable. I think he felt like Mase was the last piece to his legacy,” he said on The Howard Stern Show.
2006: 50 Cent Drops The “Bomb”/”Hip Hop”
50 Cent released “The Bomb” (also known as “Hip Hop”), a diss track that implied Diddy knew details about The Notorious B.I.G.‘s 1997 murder.
“Who shot Biggie Smalls? We don’t get ‘em, they gon’ kill us all / Man, Puffy know who hit that n–a, man, that n–a soft,” he declares.
Diddy has always maintained he was not involved. The song is considered the unofficial moment their feud formally took off.
2007: An uneasy collaboration on “I Get Money”
Despite the publicized diss track, 50 Cent and Diddy came together with Jay-Z for a remix of “I Get Money.”
Diddy later said that they put their differences aside to make music.
“The beauty about it, at the end of the day we all love to make music. It wasn’t no real egos involved, we all played our positions,” he told AllHipHop.
50 claimed years later that he and Jay-Z ghostwrote Diddy‘s verse.
“Jay helped me with that. Jay did that part right there where he said, ‘Shootouts, coastal beefs.’ I wasn’t around for that, that was like East Coast/West Coast,” he said on The Breakfast Show.
“There were certain things he wanted to say and Jay knew he wanted to insert it into the record,” he added. “[Diddy] would [be like], ‘Yo, put this in there.’ [Jay-Z’s] mind is formatted like that.”
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