EVANESCENCE’s AMY LEE: ’50 CENT Hates My Guts’

In a new interview with Daily Beast, EVANESCENCE singer Amy Lee reflected on the band’s “Best New Artist” win at the 2004 Grammy Awards, where they beat out hot favorite 50 Cent. The rapper, who had released his multi-platinum debut album “Get Rich Or Die Tryin'” the previous year, was widely favored to get the award. 50 Cent responded to the loss by walking onstage during EVANESCENCE‘s acceptance speech at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

“50 Cent hates my guts,” Lee told the Daily Beast. “It’s just one of those things… I mean, truthfully, we thought he was going to win too. It was such a wild night. People are like, ‘What was it like to win a Grammy?’ and I’m like, ‘Stressful!’ I mean, it’s wonderful now, to have them, but it was surreal… I just remember thinking, ‘I don’t even think anybody in this room knows who we are.'”

50 Cent‘s walk to the stage at the ceremony, which was broadcast on a five-minute delay, still made the Grammy Awards broadcast. Lee watched, baffled, saying, “Oh what did I do? Thanks, 50,” but 50 didn’t grab the mic or say anything, instead choosing to just smiling and make his presence felt.

“You know when you’re just in shock? He didn’t do anything. He didn’t grab the mic. It wasn’t that bad,” Amy recalled to the Daily Beast. “He just sort of, like, made an appearance. It was like Zoolander when he thought he won.”

Asked if the rapper ever personally said anything to her after the fact, Amy responded: “No, he never said anything to me, but he likes to talk about me and how he was robbed. I don’t want to start a beef with him. Thank you for saying I looked unfazed, I was so fazed. Everything around me was chaos and I was, like, ‘I’m gonna stand here and see if this is real later, if I wake up or not.'”

Lee previously reflected on the 50 Cent encounter earlier this year during an interview with Metal Hammer. At the time, she said: “I was pretty sure that we weren’t going to win, at least not ‘Best New Artist’. I thought for sure that would be 50 Cent. We were 100% the dark horse. I felt like, ‘People don’t know who I am’… I’m a 21-, 22-year-old kid, trying to dress up like a grown-up and I had my shoes off when they called our name. I don’t normally wear heels. They’re very uncomfortable.”

Three and a half years ago, 50 Cent complained about losing out on the “Best New Artist” award to EVANESCENCE as he received a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame.

“You got the largest debut hip-hop album [but] you don’t got no ‘Best New Artist’ trophy,” 50 said of the 2004 Grammy Awards ceremony. “The ‘Best New Artist’, they gave that shit to EVANESCENCE.

“Can you find fucking EVANESCENCE? I ain’t seen EVANESCENCE since that night. Since that night they gave them the trophy.”

Lee is currently promoting the 20th anniversary of EVANESCENCE‘s debut album “Fallen”, which was released as an expanded edition.

Amy Lee publicity photo by Nick Fancher, courtesy of Shore Fire Media