Dipset and G-Unit are two of Hip-Hop’s most influential groups when it comes to music, fashion, and much more. Jim Jones recently took the time to clarify that it was the Diplomats, not 50 Cent’s renegade crew, who started the mixtape movement amongst rap groups.
“Let’s get this right and I’m going to keep it all the way a buck,” Capo said during a Monday (Feb. 6) appearance on FlipDaScript podcast. “We started the mixtape movement, right? And it wasn’t a crew mixtape. We were making real albums and putting them out as mixtapes. G-Unit was doing replays of other people’s beats and making mixtapes.”
The “We Fly High” rapper continued, saying “It was a big difference. We was using our mixtapes as albums to promote our real albums, and off those mixtapes, we were taking singles that the people started loving and started putting them on our real albums.” While he was adamant about denoting the differences, he was equally intent on clarifying the timelines of who went first. “But even in that, we put the Dipset mixtape out first before G-Unit put their mixtape out. Now go Google it.”
Both crews released their first mixtapes in 2002. Dipset put out Diplomats Volume 1 first and G-Unit shared 50 Cent Is The Future later in the summer.
While Jones’ statement clears up where the credit should be given, 50 Cent and his group’s output is still laudable. They released 33 mixtapes in total and the most recent, The Lost Flash Drive, came out in 2016. The Diplomats released eight total mixtapes, with their most recent one, American Dream, coming out in 2015.
G-Unit was a force to be reckoned with after debuting the G-Unit Radio series, which ended up having 25 different editions and was the launchpad for the Power executive producer’s 2003 debut album Get Rich Or Die Tryin‘.