Courtney Kemp says she is “completely bewildered” that 50 Cent keeps bringing her up, and she said it after he named her as the one collaborator he never wants to work with again.
50 sat down with Variety to promote Street Fighter, the new film adaptation of the video game series, where he plays Balrog. He was asked if he had ever clashed with anyone so badly that he would never work with them again, and he answered right away. “Courtney [Kemp]. I don’t look forward to working with her ever again,” he said. “I don’t think that she’s wholeheartedly a bad person, I just think that it got out of control for her. After the success of ‘Power,’ she would go, ‘I wrote it.’”
He also described tension behind the scenes. “There was all kinds of weird [expletive] going on, but it got to a point where Courtney was trying to run the entire network through one show,” he told the outlet. He added that Kemp did not want to do Raising Kanan, the Power prequel, because she did not want to tell a story where viewers already knew the ending.
50 then made his case for more credit. He said he pitched Power to Chris Albrecht, who was running Starz at the time, by switching back and forth between explaining the show and playing music. He said he produced eight songs for that pitch, including the theme. When Variety asked whether Courtney Kemp had downplayed his role, his answer was short: “I think she forgot.
Kemp responded in a statement to Variety. “While 50’s recollection of budgets and production requirements is uninformed, as he was rarely in a budget meeting, I have never once understated his importance in the genesis of ‘Power,’” she said. “That said, I am completely bewildered by his need to mention me in interviews or podcasts. I have completely moved on in my career, and I hope that the imminent success of ‘Street Fighter’ allows him to do the same.”
She did not deny that he helped get Power on the air. She did not call him a liar. She separated helping launch a show from creating one, and then told him to go focus on his movie.
The credits match her account. When Starz picked up Power in 2013 with an eight episode order, Courtney Kemp was the creator and showrunner. 50 was an executive producer, and he also played Kanan on the show. Power ran for six seasons and launched a franchise that grew into spinoffs like Power Book II: Ghost, Power Book III: Raising Kanan and Power Book IV: Force.
This is not the first time the two have gone back and forth in public, but Kemp used to downplay it. In a past interview with Refinery29, she said she and 50 were extremely close and that their social media drama was just for the show. This time, Courtney Kemp sounds done with the conversation.