Everyone who listened to Pop Smoke knew of his musical brilliance, but 50 Cent says that he was more impressed with the late Brooklyn rapper’s willingness to learn.
In a video shared on his IG Live, 50 recounted a meeting he had with Pop. Fif was growing annoyed with him because Pop’s eyes and fingers was glued to his phone during the meeting, so 50 thought he wasn’t paying attention.
“I get up, because I’m trying to see what the f**k he’s doing in his phone. I swear to god, the ni**a was writing what I said down,” he said. “There’s a difference between a ni**a copying you. He never copied one f**king thing from me. He just looked at it, saw what was good in it. It influenced him, and he did his own thing with it. … I fell in love with the ni**a right then.”
As the distinctive voice behind songs like “Dior” and “Welcome To The Party,” Pop Smoke was the most prominent voice in Brooklyn drill rap. He dropped his debut mixtape Meet The Woo in July 2019, and the follow up Meet The Woo 2 in February 2020. Days later, he was murdered in a home invasion in Hollywood Hills, Calif.
In the aforementioned IG Live, 50 Cent reiterated that he’s executive producing Pop’s posthumous album.
“He told me he wanted to take his mother to an award show. I just want to make that part real,” he said, insisting that fans who love his old songs like “PTSD” will be satisfied with the new project. “…I just want to make this big for him.”