OPINION: After confirmation that Irv Gotti had died, 50 Cent decided to be on brand and mock Irv even in death.
Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
As a human who has had some less-than-stellar interactions with other humans, there are occasions when I daydream about the myriad ways I could be petty. I think of ways to create gargantuan inconveniences that would solve nary a problem but would give me a sense of diabolical joy. I also never follow through on those things; I’m a firm believer in karma, and well, my petty has limits.
Do you know whose petty has no limits? Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, who couldn’t even institute one iota of chill when the news of Irv Gotti’s passing was confirmed on Wednesday, Feb. 5. While Gotti wasn’t exactly a universally beloved figure, he was still important to hip-hop, so tributes and RIP notices began popping up all over social media.
But 50 Cent? Naw, slim. 50 Cent decided to go pull up his Instagram account, hit the little “plus” button, and select a picture of himself sitting at a bar smoking hookah with what looks like a Halloween RIP decoration next to him with a caption that read, “I’m smokin on that Gotti pack, nah God bless him (dove) LOL.” As I was writing an article about Irv at the time that his death was confirmed, I can confirm he posted that image (plus one of Irv Gotti smiling) around the time that TMZ dropped the article we all probably used to determine that he’d truly passed on.
50’s post reminded me of one very simple truth: I’m nowhere NEAR as petty as I think I am because I absolutely thought that 50 went too far and, despite their issues, unnecessarily mocked a man in death.
Look, 50 Cent and Irv were not only not friends, they were enemies. Real ones. The origin of their issues goes back to the late 1990s, when Ja Rule was robbed by a 50 Cent affiliate and 50 Cent felt snubbed by Ja Rule. It started out personal and morphed into a very real industry beef that dragged all sorts of people into their orbit. There were songs and brawls and insults and mockery and the like between the two camps (50 Cent’s G-Unit and Ja Rule and Irv Gotti’s Murder Inc.). It got nasty and to know and think of one of them means you think of their hatred and disdain for the other. Fat Joe alleged during his Club Shay Shay interview that he thought he could have squashed the beef but that Irv and Ja weren’t having it.
For nearly three decades, the two camps have attempted to take the other one down both personally and professionally. So, I understand that 50 Cent finding out that a person who is probably the 1a to his archnemesis, Ja Rule, has passed wouldn’t exactly draw out any condolences or reflective thoughts about how, even as adults, they should have ironed out their differences. But mocking a man in his death? That feels like a bridge too far, even for easily one of the pettiest human beings that has ever traversed Earth.
50 Cent has proven time and time again (with many lawsuits to prove it) that he has no chill and is willing to go to any length possible to deride and eliminate his foes, if possible — to varying results and outcomes. He’s very, very rich and very, very rich people do very, very interesting things with their money, like being willing to deal with the lawsuits that come along with actively defaming individuals and such. When you have (and have access to) more money than you can probably spend in a lifetime, I suppose the natural filter that most people have that stops them from doing things out of decorum dissolves, and instead of not saying things — like a simple RIP — you jokingly talk about smoking on that Gotti pack, a way of insulting dead opps made popular in music and videos from people who earnestly use words like “opps.”
There is no part of my soul that feels that mocking a dead man is appropriate. While God ain’t done with me yet, I have truly evolved into my “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” era. I think anybody familiar with Irv Gotti would assume that 50 Cent might say something, and I think some of us hoped he would just leave it at the most simple, innocuous statement. But 50 Cent is different. He is one of the pettiest people ever and when that’s how you identify, you clown dead men shortly after the world finds out that they’re dead.
I guess it’s nice to have a barometer to measure my own petty with, and one thing’s for sure and two things for certain: I’m nowhere near as petty as I think I am because there’s no world where I’d mock a dead man, even one I hated.
Panama Jackson is a columnist at theGrio and host of the award-winning podcast, “Dear Culture” on theGrio Black Podcast Network. He writes very Black things, drinks very brown liquors, and is pretty fly for a light guy. His biggest accomplishment to date coincides with his Blackest accomplishment to date in that he received a phone call from Oprah Winfrey after she read one of his pieces (biggest) but he didn’t answer the phone because the caller ID said “Unknown” (Blackest).
More must-reads:
