Hip-hop feuds go digital

When Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson got called out on the radio last February by fellow rapper Cam'ron, he didn't rally his posse for a club throwdown. Instead, he took the fight straight to YouTube. His tactics were similar to those of Jim "Ballin!" Jones, who answered a dis from Jay-Z protégé and Roc-A-Fella recording artist Tru Life by hacking his MySpace page and editing the user profile to transform Life into a minivan-driving poverty case who worked for "Cock-A-Fella" Records. If it all sounds a little dweeby for a genre in which street cred is the ultimate commodity—well, get used to it. "Straight-to-YouTube takedowns, MySpace hacking, and Photoshop thuggery are the new shooting, stabbing, and robbing of rap," says XXL magazine editor Eskay. "Used to be you had to shoot someone or get shot to sell records. Now you just need a high-speed Internet connection." Below, the play-by-plays.

---

50 Cent vs. Cam'ron

On February 1, Cam'ron calls up The Angie Martinez Show on Hot 97 to berate guest 50 Cent for swipes the rapper took at Cam's label, Koch Records. Martinez cuts Cam off, but 50—notorious for instigating conflict simply to boost record sales—is already off and running. Just one week later, a YouTube video he directs and stars in, entitled "Funeral Music," is posted to the MySpace page of DJ-cum-raconteur Kay Slay. In the video, shot entirely at 50's suburban Connecticut manse, members of G-Unit are shown cavorting with strippers and popping off semiautomatics as 50 expresses his desire to put Cam in the ICU. "Funeral Music" quickly becomes one of the week's most popular YouTube clips.

Six days later, Cam'ron responds with his own YouTube endeavor, "Curtis," in which the Harlem rapper leaps out of a coffin and proclaims: "I have to beef / He look like a gorilla with rabbit teeth." In a fit of synergistic marketing, a "Making of Curtis" clip is posted on YouTube the next day.

In the subsequent weeks, members from both camps, sniffing a marketing coup, fan the flames. Websites are quickly erected for fans to post Photoshopped images of the feuding rappers. A Brokeback Mountain poster with Heath Ledger playing top to Cam'ron's bottom circulates the Web.

Meanwhile, remixes of the initial dis videos proliferate. One particularly viral version—posted by a staffer of 50's G-Unit label—contains a Grand Theft Auto-style reenactment of Cam getting shot during the botched October 2005 car-jacking of his Lamborghini in Washington, D.C.

On April 3, during another radio interview on Hot 97, 50's business motives become transparent when he announces that he's signed a promotional deal with YouTube. "Everything that says 50 Cent on it, I'm credited for," he claims. And paid handsomely for, too—the rapper will get 70 percent of ad revenues from the YouTube clips he posts.