Confessions of a Vulgar Marxist: Kanye vs. 50 Cent

If you’re as tightly integrated into today’s pop culture-fabric as I am, then you’ve no doubt heard of the clash of the rap titans, Kanye West and 50 Cent, both of whom debuted their latest albums on September 11th, 2007—about a week ago. However, what magazines like Rolling Stone won’t tell you is that, underneath the grit and glamor of epic battles such as this, there’s a fairly obvious vulgar Marxist explanation. It should be immediately apparent to any decent journalist (which probably rules out all of today’s journalists) that the entire “battle” was engineered by the corporate thugs over at the RIAA and Universal. With declining album sales, how else do you reinvigorate consumers to buy overpriced products (most of the profits, of which, go to the record companies rather than the artists)? You propose a ridiculous stunt such as this one.

The undeniable, immutable facts:

• Kanye West’s Graduation is produced (in part) by Geffen Records.
• 50 Cent’s Curtis is produced (in part) by Aftermath Entertainment.
• Geffen Records is a subsidiary of Interscope-Geffen-A&M.
• Aftermath Entertainment is a subsidiary of Interscope Records.
• Interscope Records (in both the former and latter cases) is owned by Universal Music Group.

Tuddah.