Though I’d represented Ron Jeremy for a time, had my fair share of mainstream production companies – from Sony to 20th Century Fox to Warner Brothers – contact me to get product for “research,� and landed clients in the pages of magazines like Stuff and Maxim, I didn’t really grasp the concept of the uneasy cross over until I started working with 50 Cent. Or rather, his people.

A little over a year into my publicity work I found myself at my second Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas. Saturdays were usually the most insane as fans from all over crammed the Sands Expo to line up for an autograph and a squeeze with their favorite porn starlet, but mid-afternoon I saw a throng of people – complete with several photographers, camera crews and security – making their way down the aisle, stopping across from the booth for the company I was working for at the time. I tried to stand on the conference table to see who it was, but my view was obliterated by a crush of fans and boom mics.

Seeing celebrities at the Adult Entertainment Expo was nothing new – year before last, Vin Diesel was reportedly seen wandering the aisles incognito with his handlers (though many insist it was to combat the rampant gay rumors at the time), and David Spade once made a memorable appearance wherein he dropped his pants in front of a company’s booth, giving him a one-way ticket off the show floor. Mike Tyson was a staple at events like this, but even he didn’t command the frenzy that was ensuing kitty corner to my company’s booth.

The only thing that clued me into who was responsible for all the mayhem was the continuous loop of 21 Questions/In Da Club/P.I.M.P. that broadcast throughout the area. Weeks before the Expo, it was announced that 50 had signed a deal with Digital Sin to host an interactive porn title. His appearance at the Expo was to hype the project, which hadn’t even started shooting.

“That right there is a publicist’s wet dream,� I said to a director I knew. Fast forward to a month down the road. I was hired to handle their account.

50’s interactive project didn’t fly under the radar in the beginning. The previous publicist – whom I considered a colleague and hardly wanted to step on his toes – had blanketed the mainstream media with information, leading to Bill O’Reilly publicly lambasting 50’s decision to get involved in porn, even though he wasn’t performing in the title. O’Reilly reportedly called for Reebok, home of 50’s estimated $50-million shoe deal, to kill their partnership with him in light of this new addition to his ever-expanding empire. Not wanting to lose out on either cash deal, The Manager and The Lawyer jumped into action and blamed the mess on the publicist, who agreed to step down (this is to the best of my understanding, anyway – the whole situation was so convoluted.) I didn’t let any of that dampen my enthusiasm, however. Not only was 50 set to host the interactive title, later named Groupie Love, but he was going to create new music specifically for it. Everyone involved was expecting a blockbuster. I had no reason to think otherwise… until I actually tried to promote it.

The shoot was shrouded in secrecy. And although I wasn’t 100% signed to handle the account yet, my soon-to-be boss to be had asked me if I could help get some press going for it. Under any other circumstances that would’ve been easy, but the drama on this project started almost immediately. I didn’t know where it was taking place, and when I called my boss to try and get certain media to set to cover it, he said he had to ask The Lawyer and The Manager to get permission. They denied me. If they didn’t trust the press, I offered to go to set so I could filter the content that went out about it. No go. When I tried to get any morsel of information out of them to work on anything to try and build a continuous state of hype leading up to the release, everyone was tight lipped. Well, almost everyone. I had an inside source on set.

“50’s cool,� my source told me. “He’s very mellow and doesn’t really get crazy. It’s the other guys who are all over the place.�

“What other guys?� I asked. “How do you mean, all over the place?�

“You know, his posse. The G Unit guys. They’re in it too,� the source said. “Young Buck, Lloyd Banks… both of them have tested the merchandise, if you know what I’m saying.�

I nearly swallowed my teeth. “On camera?!�

“Of course not! They snuck off to the bathroom for blow jobs, at the very least.�

“How do you know?�

“When a girl walks out of the can wiping her mouth with a guy behind her wearing a huge smile and her knees are red, A and B usually add up to C.�

Point taken. But that still didn’t solve my issue of how I was going to promote what was appearing to be an unpromotable title. I wasn’t even allowed to get in touch with 50 or G Unit to get quotes about the experience.

Roughly a month later I was given the green light to go full steam ahead after a conference call with The Manager and The Lawyer. From what I could tell, The Lawyer was down with the whole thing, likely because he helped broker the deal and was in for some percentage of the royalties. The Manager, however, appeared to want to forget the whole thing had ever been agreed upon. I was instructed to go whole hog, but restrain myself. Talk about how great the set was, but don’t release any specific details. And see what I could do with sending out pictures from the set, but none that included 50. None that included 50?! The biggest draw to the title and I couldn’t use it? Nope. The mindset that was explained to me was that 50 would be used later on, but for now, focus on the title and go for it – court any and all press.

I went through my contact list and started sending out a personalized e-mail rather than a garden-variety press release. Within minutes NBC, Wireless Flash and the Associated Press got back to me, and I was giddy until I read what the contact at AP said:

Isn't this the Lloyd Banks deal? I actually talked to him about that the other day for a story I'm doing. Is it one in the same?

The Lloyd Banks deal? Sure, he was a part of it. But it wasn’t his “deal,� so to speak. I wrote her back and explained it was 50 Cent with G Unit, yadda, yadda, yadda. But I was left confused. I didn’t have time to mull it over, though, because Wireless wanted to do an interview about the project. I wrote my boss and told him the good news, but seeing as I’d had no access to The Lawyer or Manager yet, I didn’t know what everyone’s availability on interviews was. So my boss dropped them an e-mail, and forwarded me The Lawyer’s response:

The Blender article was a specific instance.

We can get press for this whenever we want.

So basically, I was spinning my wheels. Despite the fact that I’d been told to go for it, now I was being told to scale back. So fine, I could do that, but there was just one problem: magazines were already working on issues that were releasing the same month as the DVD, so if we wanted to time reviews with the product release, we had to start going after them right then and there. I told my boss who finally put me in contact with them, so I sent them a nicely-worded e-mail that assured them they were in the driver’s seat but stressed the importance of timing. The Lawyer said:

Again nothing goes out till we give written approval.

At this point, no press unless it is a special feature which is noteworthy.

But how was I supposed to get a special feature unless I courted press? This was followed by an e-mail from The Manager:

We have to hold and wait till we have the final product. We can always manipulate press. We don't want to jump to quickly.

I resisted the urge to both edit his e-mail for spelling and grammar and explain the concept of buzz, but my fuming only lasted a couple days as a huge article about the hip hop/porn connection hit the New York Times. And there was one particular point of interest to me in the piece:

Since then, 50 Cent has quietly distanced himself from the porn project. The original press release announcing the deal characterized it as a partnership between Digital Sin and 50 Cent. A revised release, put out by 50 Cent's management after the "O'Reilly Factor" broadcast, billed it instead as a collaboration between Digital Sin and Lloyd Banks, one of 50 Cent's partners in the rap group G-Unit. 50 Cent's name appears only in the final sentence of the release, which states that he and G-Unit "won't be engaged in any sexual behavior but may make general appearances."

For rappers who want to be involved in pornography, the decision may come down, in the end, to a simple matter of opportunity cost. "Our core consumers are minors, so we're not driving it that way," said 50 Cent's manager. "We're in the business of selling clothing and sneakers. We're going to have a $100 million business by the end of this year. This isn't something we're jeopardizing."

Finally, I had answers to two questions. Number one, how the title had come to be a Lloyd Banks project, and number two, why The Manager appeared to be so uneasy with it. Of course, The Lawyer shot off an e-mail about the whole thing:

[The Previous Publicist]'s unauthorized press releases have come home to roost in a very prominent nest. This New York Times article makes it look like we flip flopped even though we were very clear before G-Unit ever set foot on the AVN convention floor that this project was to be billed as Lloyd Banks' project.

I was asked not to breathe another word about the project to anyone. Period. So it was really hard to try and juggle a writer from XXL Magazine who was finishing an article on the project that had been booked before I came on board, and he needed more answers. They were pretty basic – just background stuff on how many pieces they were projecting to sell, how G Unit and Digital Sin came together, the usual kind of deal. After weeks of begging to get the info, I was sent a one-sentence answer: I don't think we should answer these he has enough.

My wet dream had turned into a nightmare.

And so it went. I’d be told to book things, then when I needed to set up interviews, I was told I wasn’t supposed to book anything. I was routinely lectured on not mentioning 50’s name anywhere in the pitches or press releases, despite the fact that I repeatedly reassured them that I wasn’t and they approved everything I sent out. Once again I was told to go out with pitches around the release of Banks’ new album, only to be told to scale back again for fear that the public would confuse the album with the porn DVD… despite the fact that they both had different titles. Then when they’d finally let me land something, they’d back and forth on it for so long that I’d wind up losing things and pissing off the media I needed to keep happy for other clients who needed them.

That was pretty much the final straw for me. When the media I needed to effectively do my job was getting so irritated with the hurry up and wait nature of dealing with the 50 Cent project – er, I mean the Lloyd Banks project – that it was affecting the rest of my clients, I decided it was time to walk. Even though I was now working with the Interscope publicist who was making life a whole lot easier, I’d been offered a job with a new company who had a litany of porn stars that needed attention, a performer/director with his own reality show on Showtime, and a bright future ahead of them all. I gave my notice. To my surprise, The Manager and The Lawyer were not at all pleased. I referred them to another colleague – with a warning of what a headache the whole Groupie Love deal had become – and moved on.