G-Unit is officially back. On Monday (August 25), 50 Cent and his maniacal band of MCs dropped The Beauty of Independence, a brand new six-song EP to cement the comeback which they put into play at the beginning of the summer.
To celebrate, Fif, Lloyd Banks, Tony Yayo, Young Buck and newcomer Kidd Kidd gave a special radio interview to Shade45 on SiriusXM and also spoke to MTV News about their reunion.
“I always felt like we would be back together and doing music. That was the most important part to me,” Banks told us. “All the other things that helped break sh– up, I didn’t participate in.”
Fif has been putting his G-Unit crew in the forefront since his storied mixtape run in the early 2000s. Even before 50 dropped his diamond-selling debut Get Rich or Die Tryin’ in 2003 fans were well acquainted with Banks, Buck and Yayo.
G-Unit were amongst the most successful rap groups in the early aughts, but around the time the group released their sophomore LP T.O.S. in 2008, things began to go sour. 50 and Banks stopped seeing eye-to-eye, and Bucks also found himself at odds with the G-Unit CEO. Yayo would go on to voice his displeasure about the crew’s lack of unity.
Despite six years of turmoil, the squad was able to put their differences aside to perform at Hot 97′s annual Summer Jam concert on June 1. Two days later 50 dropped his first post-Interscope album Animal Ambition and started a new, independent chapter in his career.
“The timing surrounding me actually having my independence, at the same time moving away from Interscope. And I look around and I say if they’re is a time to do it, it would be now,” Fif said of his plans to put the group back together.
“We didn’t have one of those situations where people were off. A lot of times when you see a group together, it’s separated on different terms,” he said, before commenting on how his mega-success made him an unhealthy crutch for the rest of the group members. “It’s more me, conditioning them for something that wasn’t healthy for me. It went on, it went on until each one of the situations kinda took it’s own path and then we had our little differences.”
Still, 50 said the members of G-Unit are like his little brothers and he’s been fairly consistent with that message.
“Most of the time it’s due to lack of communication,” Banks reasoned. “Me and Yayo always remained talking and I just had a chance to speak with Buck and we never stopped talking when we actually did get in contact.”
Now, they have a new EP and a second chance to recapture the magic they once brought to the rap world.
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