50 Cent is quoted as saying he feels that his mentor and label boss, Dr Dre, may have provided The Game with the confidence to pursue his regular public rants against him.
As you all surely know, Fiddy was once himself mentor to then fellow G:Unit member The Game. However, they publicly fell out after The Game left Fiddy's posse. The feud between the two rappers' entourages grew, seemingly leading to a couple of skirmishes in New York during which shots were fired. Despite subsequent public statements from both stars that the feud was over, The Game continued to diss Fiddy at his live shows.
50 Cent now says he is sure Dre and his Aftermath record label, to which both Fiddy and The Game are signed, gave their blessing to the feud. Fiddy: "If Game felt saying something about me was saying something about Dre, he wouldn't have said what he said. They made him have that comfort".
Of course, Dre is a shrewd business man and, with both 50 Cent and The Game having solo albums out this year, the media exposure a public feud delivers may well have providing the hip hop mogul with the motive to give The Game permission to proceed with his Fiddy dissing. Though if the feud did indeed lead to those New York shootings, that's pretty extreme marketing.