50 Cent is feeling the pressure to repeat the success of his first two albums, the rap star has revealed.
Fiddy says he knows his third album, Before I Self Destruct, won’t sell as many copies as his massively successful debut Get Rich or Die Tryin’ or its follow-up the Massacre upon its release next year.
He says he worried people will say the album is a flop because the popularity of music downloads is driving down CD sales.
"I show more vulnerability on this record than on others,” he says. "I'm in a space where I can experiment a little bit. I mean, I felt a lot of pressure between each one of my projects.
"And they don't say, 'Do you think 50 can make a good record?' They say, 'Do you think he can do it again?'
"And that means (if I will) have the same success as I've had on each one of those projects.
"They don't care whether the state of the music business is changing; they'll say I've failed if I don't do what I did on the first two projects.
"So 11 million records on my first album and 9.5 on my second album.
"And when I'm getting ready to go into this project, considering that Apple is selling millions of iPods and Microsoft is coming out with competing products and Sony - everybody has something that encourages people to download material instead of purchasing the actual CD.
"The general public will still take advantage of it and say that I'm becoming less of an artist."
