By Edward Chaykovsky

The past two weeks have been tense between former friends Floyd Mayweather Jr. and 50 Cent. Several heated exchanges took place over the social networks. Miranda Johnson of XXL Magazine caught up with the rapper/boxing promoter to get an explanation on why his feud with Mayweather has restarted. At one time the two of them were inseparable but then the two had a falling out over a business deal a few years ago.

50 Cent: “I’ll do things that will be really random and it’ll be the biggest thing at the moment ’cause nothing else is going on at that point. It happens over and over. Like just stopping by a game to throw a pitch turns into [me] on CNN and [I] can’t get away from it. When you have an aggressive aura around you, then I believe people don’t want to miss the opportunity to laugh at you. Floyd is one-dimensional. The Money Team concept is one-dimensional. We actually started pushing it during the recession. It was cool ’cause his viewership was going up but it’s not actually the right message for me and who I am. So I started working with The United Nations and The World Food Program, and feeding America. Providing meals through the SK Energy Shots and that was at the same time because I started realizing that this is not the right concept of what you should present to the public.”

“People think I get angry with Floyd, that’s like my younger brother. So he’ll do things and I won’t necessarily understand why he does it but it’ll agitate me and I’ll do things in response. Other times I’ll just watch him do something that I think is completely crazy. It’s just who he is. He doesn’t have to make adjustments for me and I don’t have to make adjustments for him. I stopped making adjustments for him. We have one of those love/hate relationships.”

“I don’t hate him, I love him, actually. Entering the sport of boxing is a reflection of that relationship. He doesn’t make any money away from the sport of boxing. That tells you when he’s done fighting, he’s done period. I just try to encourage him to do things away from the sport… ”

“It’s pretty tough to digest the concept that we don’t spend money the same. He spends all of his money. He lives a richer lifestyle than we actually live day to day. In the end, it’s not a sustainable lifestyle. I’ll have to help him when it gets too tough. We’ve had conversations about this.”