50 Cent was banned from promoting headphone line in My Life video

50 Cent was once banned from promoting his own headphone brand in one of his music videos after Interscope Records bosses feared there would be a conflict of interest with company CEO Jimmy Iovine’s Beats By Dre line with rap veteran Dr. Dre. The In Da Club hitmaker had been signed to an Interscope deal via Eminem’s Shady Records and Dre’s Aftermath Records, but he parted ways with his longtime labels last month (Feb14) after years of disagreements.
Now the hip-hop superstar, who has signed to independent firm Caroline Records, has opened up about one of the issues which prompted his decision.
50 Cent claims the company had become so closely tied to the hugely-successful Beats By Dre electronics that he had been denied the opportunity for his own product placement for his SMS Audio headphones in his My Life video in 2012.
He tells Forbes magazine, “Interscope is Beats Records. There’s no artist that has a marketing budget supporting what they’re actually doing that doesn’t have Beats headphones in the actual visual to support that brand, that company. So when I invested in SMS Audio, it kind of made people afraid.”
He adds, “There was only one marching order for them (label bosses) when they actually left for us to shoot the music video for me, Em (Eminem), and Adam Levine – My Life – (it) was to make sure my headsets weren’t actually in the video.”
The rapper even tried to skirt around the rules by wearing a cap featuring the SMS logo, but the letters were blurred out in the final edit of the promo.