50 Cent Says Nas Needs To Put Down The Books

By: Yves Erwin Salomon

50 Cent has been taking jabs at Nas for several years. The two men were once friends when 50 Cent was signed to the Trackmasters'Columbia-distributed label and Nas took him out on 1999's Nastradamus tour. 50 Cent recently shared his thoughts on Nas when asked if there were any really intelligent rappers.

50 Cent told XXL, "You have different kinds of people. You have people that are extremely book-smart that lack common sense, so they don't know what's going to affect their audience.... For instance, Nas is a really smart guy. He reads books constantly. We were around him on the Nastradamus tour. He was almost weirder than me 'cause we would go to breakfast and he'd be there reading a book."

The rapper added, "Conceptually, I think that's what made him drift away from what his initial audience enjoys from him and why he's not hot right now."

50 Cent will release his new album, Curtis, on September 11th.