50 CENT TALKS CASTING KELLY ROWLAND IN “BABY BY ME”

50 Cent chose Kelly Rowland to star in his “Baby By Me” video “because she’s beautiful…and has a really strong international presence,” the rapper tells Billboard.com. The Chris Robinson-directed clip premiered on the internet yesterday, November 2nd.

“I ran into Kelly at the Latin VMAs, which I attended to perform with Wisin and Yandel, and I asked her if she would consider doing it,” 50 explains. “You can’t forget all the work she did with Destiny’s Child. The difference between Kelly and Beyonce is the extreme focus they put on Beyonce to make sure she was completely right. Kelly wasn’t held in the same regard, so, in order for her to mean anything to America, they’d have to match the marketing dollars spent on Beyonce. She never received the superstar treatment.”

“This album is the sequel to ‘Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ — it has all the elements that I missed writing about on that first project,” 50 says. “That album translated the strongest and what I presented then was a lot of aggression. The actual album has lyrics about moments from my childhood, and I describe then from a child’s perspective.”