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September 10, 2007 — Kenny Chesney wrapped his Flip Flop Summer tour this weekend with a two-night stand in Atlanta, closing out just in time to focus on promoting his upcoming new CD, Just As I Am: Poets & Pirates, which lands in stores today.

Kenny tells Dial-Global that he's very aware of the competition between rappers Kanye West and 50 Cent, who are sparring over sales expectations for their CDs that will also be released tomorrow. 50 Cent is vowing to retire if Kanye outsells him, telling Rolling Stone he'll give up performing if Kanye sells more records.

While Kenny says he respects both artists and hopes they both do well, he points out: "The only thing that bothered me — and it might have been me just standing up for our genre, and for our fans — it wasn't as if they were looking at me and my record as if I was irrelevant, but looking at the people who buy our music and that represent our music, and more importantly who we are singing to and for — and they act as if those people don't even exist."

Kenny says he's certainly not going to retire if one of the rappers beats his sales tomorrow, but he has to stand up for himself and country music. "I mean, it's silly," he says, "but I did see a comment 50 Cent made when they told him about my comment, and he went, like, 'Who?' In November of 2005, when The Road and the Radio came out, it came out the same day as 50 Cent [the Get Rich or Die Tryin' movie soundtrack] and we beat him, so he knows. And I've had four albums in a row to debut at No. 1 in the world. And it bothered me a touch that they don't even recognize the fact that that's happened, and I just wanted to be sure that they're looking over their left shoulder instead of their right."