People: Kanye showed him no quarter
It’s official: Kanye West is the winner in his much-hyped sales war with fellow rapper 50 Cent.
West’s “Graduation” widely outsold 50 Cent’s “Curtis” in first-week sales, according to Nielsen SoundScan: 957,000 copies to 691,000.
“To be a champion, you’ve got to take out a champion,” West declared Tuesday night at GQ magazine’s 50th anniversary party, as an all-star crowd including Jay-Z, Beyonce and Diddy cheered him on.
“I was the underdog because I sold less records in the past, so it was a win-win for me,” he said.
Though selling almost 700,000 copies in the first week is impressive, it was still a letdown for 50 Cent. His last album, 2005’s “The Massacre,” moved 1.1 million.
Fiddy, who had vowed to retire as a solo artist if West outsold him, didn’t address that in a statement, but was conciliatory in defeat.
“I am very excited to have participated in one of the biggest album release weeks in the last two years,” he said. “This marks a great moment for hip-hop music, one that will go down in history.”
Putting down new roots
Rapper-producer Timbaland, who has collaborated on No. 1 songs for Justin Timberlake and Nelly Furtado, will appear on ABC’s “One Life to Live” on Oct. 9.
Timbaland and Keri Hilson will perform the hit single “The Way I Are” from his new album, “Timbaland Presents Shock Value.”
Mary J. Blige, Erykah Badu and Chris Botti have also performed on the show.
Missing in action
Matthew McConaughey is taking Owen Wilson‘s role in the upcoming film comedy “Tropic Thunder.”
Wilson dropped out of the project, about a group of actors who gather on a remote island to shoot a war movie and are forced to become soldiers themselves, after an apparent suicide attempt last month.
“Tropic Thunder,” which is filming in Hawaii, also stars Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr. and Nick Nolte.
No crying in hardball
Elisabeth Hasselbeck says she struggled to keep her cool during her heated on-air spat with Rosie O’Donnell on “The View.”
“I almost had the same feeling in me as when I had a championship (softball) game and I was up to bat and the pressure was on,” she says. “I’m very lucky that tears didn’t come out.”
Following the confrontation in May, former co-host O’Donnell left the daytime talk show earlier than planned.
Time to bench Britney?
Britney Spears has been ordered to undergo random drug and alcohol testing twice a week as part of her custody dispute with ex-husband Kevin Federline.
A judge also said Spears must meet for eight hours a week with a “parenting coach” who will observe and report back to the court about her parenting skills.
The birthday bunch
Actress-comedian Anne Meara is 78. Actress Sophia Loren is 73. Actor Gary Cole is 51. Actress Kristen Johnston (“3rd Rock From The Sun”) is 40. Singers Gunnar and Matthew Nelson (Nelson) are 40. Rapper Yung Joc is 25.