The early 2000s were a crazy time for hip-hop in New York City. In a recent interview with Vlad TV, Tony Yayo recalled the time when Prodigy of Mobb Deep, who was signed to G-Unit, caught his gun charge, but the police attempted to use the legendary rapper to take down 50 Cent. Yayo said, “They wanted him to plant the gun on 50.“
Rapper Tony Yayo appears onstage during MTV’s Total Request Live at the MTV Times Square Studios – Scott Gries/Getty Images
The clip then cuts to a throwback interview of Prodigy on VladTV where he discussed the case in-depth. He said that the NYPD was applying pressure to either get him to confess or reveal who had possession of the gun that was found in the vehicle. P recalled that they offered to let him “walk right now,” if he was able to help them “get something on 50.”
Yayo said that the police already had plenty of issues with 50 Cent at the height of his career, even though many members of the NYPD were fans of G-Unit.
“There’s a lot of cops that are fans,” he said. “They’ll run down, ‘Yo, I was gonna give you a ticket but I knew it was your car.’ It be stuff like that in New York because we legends out there and we appreciate everybody. But you know, there were some bad cops. They wanted to, you know, set a mothafucka up.”