In another interview, he said he would retire if West outsold him.įifty, who is planning a world tour for his album, was conciliatory in defeat. Last month, 50 didn’t think of West as much of a competitor: “It’s great marketing on Def Jam’s part, by putting us out there at the same time and make like we can actually be compared on some level,” he told the AP. In fact, West’s “Graduation” is the only other album to come close to that figure since. His last album, 2005’s “The Massacre,” sold 1.1 million in its first week. Though selling almost 700,000 copies in the first week is a sterling achievement, it was still a considerable letdown for 50 Cent. “Everyone is coming up to me and telling me how proud they are of me.” “It feels overwhelming,” West told The Associated Press earlier in the day. Things couldn’t be much better for West, who gave the struggling music industry its best debut of the year with “Graduation,” besting the year’s previous first-week champ, Linkin Park, which sold 623,000 of “Minutes to Midnight” when it debuted in May. Moments later, he called for his “theme music,” then launched into a performance of his song “Good Life.”

“To be a champion, you’ve got to take out a champion,” West declared Tuesday night, as an all-star crowd including Jay-Z, Beyoncé and Diddy cheered him on.

Just hours after he was officially crowned the victor in his much-hyped sales battle with 50 Cent, Kanye West turned up at GQ’s 50th anniversary party as the featured performer.īut the evening was more like a coronation for West, whose “Graduation” widely outsold 50 Cent’s “Curtis” in first week sales, according to Nielsen SoundScan: 957,000 copies to 691,000 copies.

Kanye west graduation album sales