50 Cent has a fraught and complicated relationship with his dick, a frequent collaborator with whom he’s made some of his most successful songs, but over whom he demands an almost abusive amount of creative control. That uneasy dynamic has led to some confusing moments for those of us outside it—such as when Fifty prescribed his four-step process to stop jerking off, seemingly signaling that their partnership was strictly business from now on, only to later blame his infamously errant first pitch at a 2014 Mets game on “excessive masturbation.” And now he’s mad that his dick made an unauthorized cameo on the most recent Power, even though he previously gave it his blessing. So many mixed signals and embarrassingly public love-hate catfights; jeez, will 50 Cent and his dick get a room already?
The trouble began during Saturday’s episode of the Starz drama, in which 50 Cent’s character, Kanan, proves to his cousin Jukebox that the debilitating burns he sustained from Ghost shouldn’t disqualify him from their upcoming heist by engaging in mutual masturbation with Candie and—but hey, why are we wasting your time recounting this? This is the Starz drama Power; we’re obviously all up to speed. But while you were so caught up in the double-life intrigue of balancing drug dealing and nightclub management, you might have missed the tip of 50 Cent’s dick, which was briefly visible—if shrouded in shadow—in the scene where Fifty ruins his baseball chances forever.
Speaking to TV Guide before the episode’s premiere, the rapper-actor seemed pretty excited about his dick breaking into a new medium: “My penis is going to debut!” he’s quoted as saying, while grinning “that 50 Cent Cheshire cat grin” and shrugging off any sort of regrets. “I don’t give a fuck,” he adds. “First it was supposed to be darker [after footage was edited.] You couldn’t see it on the screen. [A producer ] was like, ‘I gotta show you! When you put it on the screen, you can see it.’ I don’t care.”
But by Saturday, he’d apparently had a change of heart about not caring, after realizing that the scene could prove off-putting to Power’s core viewership of his aunt.
Fifty took it a step further with a series of posts directed at showrunner Courtney Kemp, repeatedly calling her a “bitch,” suggesting she should kiss his ass, and claiming that his dick never appeared in the edits he saw. “BITCH I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU DID THAT WITH OUT TELLING ME FIRST, WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU !!!” he said in one typical since-deleted post, all of which live on in screenshots.
Displaying the heroic patience it must take to make a TV show or sandwich with 50 Cent, Kemp replied that he had signed a nudity waiver just like every other actor on the show where he serves as executive producer—even deploying the eggplant emoji, so there would be no room for misinterpretation.
But by yesterday, whatever fury 50 Cent felt seemed to have dissipated: After deleting his earlier, angrier posts, he shared another photo of himself with his aunt saying she’d indeed been “traumatized” by the episode, but appeared to be crying-laughing-face-emoji about it. He seemed to be taking it all in good spirits, like the crystal-clear taste of Effen Vodka.
Was 50 Cent’s latest row with his penis all just a trolling publicity stunt, aimed at getting people to talk about Power, a show that is, huh, in its third season on Starz? Or is this all just another chapter in the ongoing, A Star Is Born-like struggle between the rapper and the ingénue muse threatening to overshadow him? We may never know what’s really going on with 50 Cent and his dick—even though God knows, this is neither the first nor the last time we’ll be asked to ponder it.