Rapper 50 Cent claims that he personally pitched Steve Jobs on paying him $150,000 to promote the iPod in his 2003 music video for the hit song “P.I.M.P.”
“You think you could sell an iPod? I could sell an iPod,” 50 recalled telling Jobs in a recent interview. “Jimmy [Iovine] will tell you, in that 10 minutes that I sat there, I got [Jobs] to give me $150,000. [It was] the first time Apple did product placement in anything, any music video.”
The anecdote came up in an online interview with 50 Cent for the hip hop-focused media outlet Hiphopnmore. It’s an interesting story to be sure — and the iPod does indeed feature prominently in the music video for P.I.M.P., the fourth single off his album Get Rich or Die Tryin’.
Some questions to be answered
But the story doesn’t totally hang together. In the interview, 50 Cent mentions that this was the first time he had seen an iPod. That could be true, but by August 2003 the iPod had already been out for approaching two years. The iPod featured in the video is the third-gen device.
The interview also makes it sound as if Apple had never been featured in product placement before. In fact, Apple computers had long been a favorite of people working in the entertainment industry. Anyone who watched Sex in the City, Seinfeld or Hollywood movies like Independence Day was used to seeing Apple products pop up on screen. To be fair to 50 Cent, however, I can’t remember an iPod featuring in a music video prior to this point.
Nonetheless, it’s a nifty story — and the idea of 50 Cent and Steve Jobs meeting for a chat is tremendous. Then again, Jobs knew Jimmy Iovine (who later joined Apple with the 2014 Beats purchase after Jobs’ death) very well, which might help explain how the connection came about.
