50 Cent Says the Jay-Z and Eminem Stadium Shows Were Marketing, Built to Make Jay "Appear as Big as Eminem"

He never says Jay-Z's name in the passage. He does not need to. The details only fit one rapper, and the measuring stick he uses is Eminem.

50 Cent has spent two decades poking at Jay-Z, but his latest jab runs straight through Eminem. In a conversation with comedian and Street Fighter co-star Andrew Schulz for Interview Magazine, published October 9, 2026, 50 argued that pairing Jay-Z with Eminem for stadium shows in New York and Detroit was a deliberate move to change how big Jay looked. His words: it was done "to change perception and make him appear as big as Eminem."

That is a remarkable thing for 50 to say out loud. It is a shot at Jay-Z, but it is also a ranking, and Eminem is the one sitting at the top of it.

What 50 actually said

The exchange starts with 50 talking about how touring deals work. If an artist has a strong enough relationship with the big promoters, he said, a deal can come together because the promoter is "securing the tour deal with Beyoncé." From there he moved to the stadium run. When a team wants to widen an artist's audience, he said, they might book New York and Detroit, and in this case "they matched him up with the biggest rapper in the world like they're the same."

Then the hometown line, the one every outlet has pulled out since: one show in your city, one in mine, to make him "appear as big as Eminem."

He closed by turning to an album. It "showed up number 23 on the chart when it debuted," 50 said, and nobody treated it as a big deal back then. His explanation for why it is treated as one now: "It's great marketing."

Right after that, Schulz brought up Jay-Z by name. He told 50 that the Street Fighter producers first approached Jay-Z for the role of Balrog, the boxer 50 ended up playing. 50 flatly refused to believe it, and said no amount of money would get Jay-Z to train for a part like that.

Why everyone reads it as Jay-Z

The Interview Magazine passage uses "he" and "him" throughout. AllHipHop, which wrote up the interview on October 10, read it as being about Jay-Z, and the details back that up:

• The hometown shows. Jay-Z and Eminem co-headlined The Home & Home Tour in 2010: two nights at Comerica Park in Detroit on September 2 and 3, then two nights at Yankee Stadium on September 13 and 14. It was announced as one show per city, and a second night was added in each after the first dates sold out on day one.
• The wife. Beyoncé is married to Jay-Z, and she came out during his set at Yankee Stadium on September 13, 2010.
• No. 23. Jay-Z's debut Reasonable Doubt came out on June 25, 1996 and peaked at No. 23 on the Billboard 200, with 43,000 copies in its first week. It was certified platinum in February 2002.
• The anniversary. Reasonable Doubt turned 30 this year, and Roc Nation has marked it with New York subway campaigns, merchandise and limited reissues.

Put together, the subject is not much of a mystery.

Jay-Z and Eminem perform "Renegade" at Yankee Stadium during the 2010 Home & Home run. Fan-shot footage.

The Eminem part

Strip out the Jay-Z jab and the underlying claim is about Eminem's size in 2010. In 50's telling, Eminem was the draw that other people's teams wanted to stand next to. That summer Em was riding Recovery, released in June, which finished as the best-selling album of 2010 in the US with 3.42 million copies, per Nielsen SoundScan.

50 has his own history with that pull. Eminem signed him to Shady and Aftermath in 2002, and 50 has never been shy about crediting that deal for his own rise. So when he calls Eminem "the biggest rapper in the world" and uses him as the yardstick, it lands as a compliment to one man and a dig at the other.

It is also not the whole picture of the Jay-Z and Eminem relationship. Eminem produced "Renegade" for Jay-Z's The Blueprint in 2001, the only guest verse on the album. He mixed the final version himself after Jay-Z recorded over the part originally meant for Royce da 5'9". And this July, Eminem walked out at Jay-Z's Yankee Stadium anniversary residency to perform "Renegade" and "Lose Yourself." We covered that night here. That is two artists who keep choosing to share a stage, whatever 50 thinks the business reasons were in 2010.

The official "Renegade" lyric video, one of the Blueprint anniversary uploads on Jay-Z's channel. Here is how it is outpacing the rest of the album.

Is he right?

Partly, in the way 50 is often partly right. Pairing two headliners to sell stadiums is a business decision, and promoters do think about how a booking positions an artist. But "marketing" does not explain why both nights in both cities sold out on the first day, and the Detroit shows were Eminem's home crowd as much as anyone's. The more accurate read is that both men gained from it, which is usually how a co-headline works.

As for Reasonable Doubt, No. 23 is a real number, and the album was not a commercial smash at release. Its reputation grew over years, which is true of plenty of debuts now treated as classics. That is a fair point to make. Calling all of it marketing is the 50 Cent version of that point.

As of October 11, Jay-Z had not responded publicly, and neither had Eminem. That is very much on brand for both.

Sources: Andrew Schulz's conversation with 50 Cent in Interview Magazine (October 9, 2026); AllHipHop (October 10, 2026); Associated Press and Nielsen SoundScan year-end 2010 sales reporting; Wikipedia entries for The Home & Home Tour, Reasonable Doubt and Renegade, citing Billboard, RIAA and contemporary reporting. 50 Cent's quotes are as published by Interview Magazine.