50 Cent has hit back at R&B singer Alicia Keys for criticising gangsta rap - insisting her comments were "not really bright".

Keys courted controversy by voicing her opinions on the hip-hop subgenre, telling U.S. magazine Blender, "Gangsta rap was a ploy to convince black people to kill each other."

And her comments have enraged rapper 50 Cent - real name Curtis Jackson - whose music is said to fall into the gangsta rap category.

He tells The Showbuzz, "I don't like Alicia Keys no more though … the same reason why I said that I don't like Oprah Winfrey. I'm prejudice(d). I don't like people who don't like me. If you don't like the content that I write because of my experiences; I am being who I am when I am writing it. I fall into that 'label' as far as you considering artists creating 'Gangsta music,' we fall into that.

If she don't like that, (then) I don't like that classical music shit she be doing. At some point she's playing some shit that don't relate to me. We listen to it and try to figure out why people actually enjoy it. I am trying to enjoy it. That statement changes my perception of Alicia Keys totally. But the magazine is standing behind it, which means they probably have a tape of her in conversation saying it. It's just not really a bright comment anyway."

Keys has since retracted the statement, insisting her words were taken out of context.