Rick Ross Trolls 50 Cent’s Reebok Comeback And Says Lloyd Banks Had Better Shoes

The Rick Ross 50 Cent feud picked back up Thursday night when Ross posted the news of the Reebok G-Unit G6 comeback to his Instagram Story and stacked two text boxes over it. The first one read “Costco got these now” with two crying laughing faces. The second one is where the real disrespect lives: “Lloyd banks hi tops better,” with a fire emoji sitting next to it.

Lloyd Banks is 50’s artist, the lyricist people still credit as the most technically gifted rapper G-Unit ever put out, and Ross is telling the boss that the boss did not even have the best shoe on his own label. That is a very specific kind of petty, and it is not new for Ross. Back in 2020 he sat on Instagram playing Banks’s “I’m So Fly,” tagged 50 for emphasis, and asked out loud whether Banks was still holding any money. In 2023 he went further and made a public offer for the catalogs of Banks, Tony Yayo and Young Buck, plus the masters to Beg for Mercy, putting his number at $2 million and calling 50 a diabolical genius while he did it. Ross has spent years using G-Unit’s own roster as the weapon, and he reached for the same tool again this week.

Here is what he was actually clowning. Reebok is bringing the G-Unit G6 back on August 20 at $130, sold through Reebok and select retailers with JD Sports already carrying the listing. It is a 1:1 retro, not a redesign. White leather upper, light grey suede toe cap, red, white and blue accents at the forefoot and heel, a silver G-6 lace dubrae, tri color heel tab, “G-Unit” embroidered in blue on the lateral heel, and a translucent blue outsole. It is the exact pair people remember, which is the entire point of a retro and also, apparently, the entire problem for Ross.

The shoe carries real weight. The G6 arrived in 2003 alongside “Get Rich or Die Tryin’,” which made 50 one of the first rappers in the game with his own signature sneaker line rather than an endorsement. Reebok got there by accident. 50 has said the brand turned to hip hop after losing the bidding war for LeBron James, so instead of a teenage phenom they signed the loudest new rapper alive. It worked. The G6 shared shelf space with Jay-Z’s S. Carter line that same year, and 50 has claimed for two decades that his shoe outsold Jay’s six to one. The partnership reportedly generated around $80 million, and the broader line ran deep with the G XT, the G6 Runner, the G-Unit Boot and a women’s exclusive. Whatever the Rick Ross 50 Cent scoreboard says today, that run is one of the reasons rappers get sneaker money at all.

The comeback also got spoiled by 50’s own camp. Tony Yayo let it slip on “The Real Report” with Uncle Murda back in May, months before official images existed. When 50 saw the leak circulating, his reaction was short and about as resigned as he gets: “I can’t tell Yayo nothing.”

 

Rumors had been floating for years before that, so the confirmed August date closes out a very long wait for people who have been paying resale prices for beat up 2003 pairs.

 

Timing is what makes this one land harder than the usual Rick Ross 50 Cent exchange. This is the third round in about eight days. 50 started it by clowning the projected first week numbers for Ross’s new album “Set in Stone,” roughly 26,000 units, and made a point of counting up the features next to that figure. Ross answered from his swimming pool, waved off the whole thing, and asked the question that has been following 50 for weeks: “How’s it going in Shreveport?” He accused 50 of borrowing money from people in the city and failing to land the loans he wanted for his studio plans there. 50 came right back at the album sales again. Now Ross has found a third door, and it happens to be the one 50 built in 2003.