Wiki
-
Release Date
1 January 2007
-
Length
17 tracks
Curtis is the third studio album by 50 Cent. It was released September 11, 2007, by Shady Records, Aftermath Entertainment, Interscope Records and Universal Music Group. The album features production from Dr. Dre, Eminem, and Timbaland, among others. Music writers have noted that 50 Cent divides between "hard" and "soft" songs on the album.
Curtis received generally mixed reviews from music critics upon release. The album debuted at #2 on the US Billboard 200 chart, selling 691,000 copies in its first week. After years of slumping sales, the album's competition with Kanye West's Graduation (2007) and the resulting record-breaking performances both albums displayed was considered to be a "great day for hip hop."
Initially, 50 Cent's 2007 album which was planned to be Before I Self Destruct. However, he decided to push back its release date to 2008, and instead to release Curtis in 2007. The album's title was changed twice. For the first time, it was changed from "Curtis" to "Curtis S.S.K.". The second time, the title of the album was changed back from "Curtis S.S.K." to "Curtis". The "S.S.K.", which stood for "SoundScan Killer", was intended to show the pressure 50 Cent felt to succeed. The "S.S.K." also stands for "SouthSide King" and "Shoot, Stab, Kill". 50 Cent stated that the album was inspired by his life before his commercial debut, Get Rich or Die Tryin'. He also stated that he chose the album's title because he was known as "Curtis" before he became famous. In January 2007, DJ Whoo Kid predicted the album to be a double disc LP, with one CD having a "crazy club-bangin' ridiculous" theme and the other having a "hard-core killer sh–," theme. However, this did not materialize.
Curtis debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200 chart, selling 691,000 copies in its first week. It had the fourth highest sales week for an album in 2007 (topping Linkin Park's Minutes to Midnight which sold 625,000, then outsold by the Eagles' Long Road Out of Eden, which moved 711,000 units and later Alicia Keys' As I Am bringing in 742,000 copies.) It also had the highest sales week for an album by an East Coast-based artist since Jay-Z's Kingdom Come debuted with 680,000 copies sold several months earlier. However, Curtis brought in the third-lowest first-week sales of 50 Cent's career, with Get Rich or Die Tryin' selling 872,000 and The Massacre moving 1.14 million copies.
The album sold 143,000 copies in its second week of release in the US, 71,000 copies in its third week, 50,000 copies in its fourth week, 38,000 copies in its fifth week on the chart, and 30,000 copies sold in its sixth week, It sold 24,000 copies in its seventh week, 20,000 in its eighth week, 17,000 in its ninth week, 17,000 in its 10th week, 21,000 in its 11th week, 15,000 in its 12th week, 17,000 in its 13th week, 19,000 in its 14th week, and 25,000 in its 15th week. In the US, Curtis ultimately sold 1,225,000 in 2007.
In 2007, Curtis was ranked as the 36th most popular album of the year on the Billboard 200.
In July 2007, Kanye West changed the release date for his third studio album Graduation from September 18, 2007, to the same release date as Curtis, with September 11, 2007. This forced the albums to go head-to-head and compete for higher sales against each other. 50 Cent claimed that if Graduation sold more records than Curtis, he would stop releasing solo albums. However, he later dispelled his comments. When asked again about his threat to retire, 50 Cent stated that, if he were to lose, he will release an album every time a major Def Jam artist releases an album.
Graduation's first-week sales of 957,000 and Curtis's first-week sales of 691,000 served as only the second time since 1991, when Nielsen SoundScan began collecting data, that two albums sold more than 600,000 in a week in the United States; in 1991, Guns N' Roses released Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II, selling 685,000 and 770,000 copies, respectively. The first-week sales totals of Graduation and Curtis outsold the first-week sales totals of Guns N' Roses' two albums. In September 2008, Billboard released the one-year sales figures for both albums: Curtis finished with sales of 1,336,000, and Graduation finished with sales of 2,116,000.
Album descriptions on Last.fm are editable by everyone. Feel free to contribute!
All user-contributed text on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.
