Curtis James Jackson III(born July 6, 1975),[3]known professionally as50 Cent,[n 1]is an American rapper, actor, television producer, businessman, and record executive. Born inSouth Jamaica, a neighborhood ofQueens, Jackson began pursuing a musical career in 1996. In 1999–2000, he recorded his debut albumPower of the DollarforColumbia Records; however, he was struck by nine bullets during a shooting in May 2000, causing its release to be cancelled and Jackson to be dropped from the label. His 2002 mixtape,Guess Who's Back?was discovered by Detroit rapperEminem, who signed Jackson to his labelShady Records, an imprint ofDr. Dre'sAftermath EntertainmentandInterscope Recordsthat same year.[5][6]
His debut studio album, Get Rich or Die Tryin'(2003) was released to critical acclaim and commercial success. Peaking atop the Billboard200, it spawned the Billboard Hot 100-number one singles "In da Club" and "21 Questions" (featuring Nate Dogg), and received nonuple platinum certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). That same year, he launched the record label G-Unit Records, namesake of a hip hop group he formed two years prior; the label's initial signees were its members, fellow East Coast rappers Lloyd Banks and Tony Yayo. His second album, The Massacre (2005) was met with similar success and supported by his third number-one single, "Candy Shop" (featuring Olivia). He adopted a lighter, further commercially oriented approach for his third and fourth albums, Curtis (2007) and Before I Self Destruct (2009)—both were met with critical and commercial declines—and aimed for a return to his roots with his fifth album, Animal Ambition(2014). He has since focused on his career in television and media, having executive-produced and starred in the television series Power (2014–2020), as well as its numerous spin-offs under his company G-Unit Films and Television Inc.[7]
Jackson was born in the borough of Queens, New York City, and raised in its South Jamaicaneighborhood[3] by his mother Sabrina. Sabrina, a drug dealer, raised Jackson until she died in a fire when Jackson was eight years old.[13][14] Jackson revealed in an interview that his mother was a lesbian.[15][16] After his mother's death and his father's departure, Jackson was raised by his grandparents.[17]
He began boxing at about age 11, and when he was 14, a neighbor opened a boxing gym for local youth. "When I wasn't killing time in school, I was sparring in the gym or selling crack on the strip," Jackson remembered.[18] He sold crack during primary school.[19] "I was competitive in the ring and hip-hop is competitive too ... I think rappers condition themselves like boxers, so they all kind of feel like they're the champ."[20]
At age 12, Jackson began dealing narcotics when his grandparents thought he was in after-school programs,[21] and brought guns and drug money to school. In the tenth grade, he was caught by metal detectors at Andrew Jackson High School: "I was embarrassed that I got arrested like that ... After I got arrested I stopped hiding it. I was telling my grandmother [openly], 'I sell drugs.'"[22]
On June 29, 1994, Jackson was arrested for selling four vials of cocaine to an undercover police officer. He was arrested again three weeks later, when police searched his home and found heroin, ten ounces of crack cocaine, and a starting pistol. Although Jackson was sentenced to three to nine years in prison, he served six months in a boot camp and earned his GED. He has said that he did not use cocaine himself.[17][23][24] Jackson adopted the nickname "50 Cent" as a metaphor for change.[25] The name was inspired by Kelvin Martin, a 1980s Brooklyn robber known as "50 Cent"; Jackson chose it "because it says everything I want it to say. I'm the same kind of person 50 Cent was. I provide for myself by any means."[26]
Career
1996–2002: Rise to fame, shooting, and early mixtapes
Jackson began rapping in a friend's basement, where he used turntables to record over instrumentals.[27] In 1996, a friend introduced him to Jam Master Jay of Run-DMC, who was establishing Jam Master Jay Records. Jay taught him how to count bars, write choruses, structure songs, and make records.[28][29] Jackson's first appearance was on "React" with Onyx, for their 1998 album Shut 'Em Down. He credited Jam Master Jay for improving his ability to write hooks,[20] and Jay produced Jackson's first (unreleased) album.[14] In 1999, after Jackson left Jam Master Jay, the platinum-selling producers Trackmasterssigned him to Columbia Records. They sent him to an upstate New York studio, where he produced 36 songs in two weeks;[13] 18 were included on his 2000 album, Power of the Dollar.[30] Jackson founded Hollow Point Entertainment with former G-Unit member Bang 'Em Smurf.[31][32]
Jackson's popularity began to grow after the successful, controversial underground single "How to Rob", which he wrote in a half-hour car ride to a studio.[25][33] The track comically describes how he would rob famous artists. Jackson explained the song's rationale: "There's a hundred artists on that label, you gotta separate yourself from that group and make yourself relevant."[25] Rappers Jay-Z, Kurupt, Sticky Fingaz, Big Pun, DMX, Wyclef Jean, and the Wu-Tang Clan responded to the track,[33] and Nasinvited Jackson to join him on his Nastradamustour.[34] Although "How to Rob" was intended to be released with "Thug Love" (with Destiny's Child), two days before he was scheduled to film the "Thug Love" music video, Jackson was shot and hospitalized.[35]
On May 24, 2000, Jackson was attacked by a gunman outside his grandmother's former home in South Jamaica. After getting into a friend's car, he was asked to return to the house to get some jewelry; his son was in the house, and his grandmother was in the front yard.[citation needed]Jackson returned to the back seat of the car, and another car pulled up nearby; an assailant walked up and fired nine shots at close range with a 9mmhandgun. Jackson was shot in the hand, arm, hip, both legs, chest, and left cheek.[14][22][36] His facial wound resulted in a swollen tongue, the loss of a wisdom tooth and a slightly slurred voice;[22][34][37] his friend was wounded in the hand. They were driven to a hospital, where Jackson spent 13 days. The alleged attacker, Darryl "Homicide" Baum, Mike Tyson's close friend and bodyguard,[38] was killed three weeks later.[39]
Jackson recalled the shooting: "It happens so fast that you don't even get a chance to shoot back .... I was scared the whole time ... I was looking in the rear-view mirror like, 'Oh shit, somebody shot me in the face! It burns, burns, burns.'"[22] In his autobiography, From Pieces to Weight: Once upon a Time in Southside Queens, he wrote: "After I got shot nine times at close range and didn't die, I started to think that I must have a purpose in life ... How much more damage could that shell have done? Give me an inch in this direction or that one, and I'm gone."[17] Jackson used a walker for six weeks and fully recovered after five months. When he left the hospital, he stayed in the Poconos with his girlfriend and son, and his workout regime helped him develop a muscular physique.[14][22][40]
In the hospital, Jackson signed a publishing deal with Columbia Records before he was dropped from the label and blacklisted by the recording industry because of his song, "Ghetto Qu'ran". Unable to work in a U.S. studio, he went to Canada.[41][42] With business partner Sha Money XL, Jackson recorded over thirty songs for mixtapes to build a reputation. In a HitQuartersinterview, Marc Labelle of Shady RecordsA&Rsaid that Jackson used the mixtape circuit to his advantage: "He took all the hottest beats from every artist and flipped them with better hooks. They then got into all the markets on the mixtapes and all the mixtape DJs were messing with them."[43] Jackson's popularity increased, and in 2002 he released the mixtape Guess Who's Back?. He then released 50 Cent Is the Future backed by G-Unit, a mixtape revisiting material by Jay-Z and Raphael Saadiq.[30]
2002–2007: Mainstream breakthrough, Get Rich or Die Tryin', and The Massacre
“One of the things that excited me about Tupacwas even if he was rhymin’ the simplest words in the world, you felt like he meant it and it came from his heart. That’s the thing with 50. That same aura. That’s been missing since we lost Pac and Biggie. The authenticity, the realness behind it.”
In 2002, Eminem heard Jackson's Guess Who's Back? album, received from Jackson's attorney (who was working with Eminem's manager, Paul Rosenberg).[35] Impressed, Eminem invited Jackson to fly to Los Angeles and introduced him to Dr. Dre.[14][28][35] After signing a $1 million record deal,[28] Jackson released No Mercy, No Fear. The mixtape featured one new track, "Wanksta", which appeared on Eminem's 8 Milesoundtrack.[30] Jackson was also signed by Violator Management and Sha Money XL's Money Management Group.[citation needed] 50 Cent released his debut album, Get Rich or Die Tryin'(described by AllMusic as "probably the most hyped debut album by a rap artist in about a decade"), in February 2003.[45]Rolling Stonenoted its "dark synth grooves, buzzy keyboards and a persistently funky bounce", with Jackson complementing the production in "an unflappable, laid-back flow".[46] It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 872,000 copies in its first four days.[47] The lead single, "In da Club" (noted by The Source for its "blaring horns, funky organs, guitar riffs and sparse hand claps"),[48]set a Billboard record as the most listened-to song in radio history within a week.[49]
50 Cent in 2006
Interscope began funding and distributing for Jackson's label, G-Unit Records, in 2003.[50] He signed Lloyd Banks, Tony Yayo and Young Buck as members of G-Unit, and The Game was later signed in a joint venture with Dr. Dre's Aftermath Entertainment. G-Unit Records replaced Jackson's previous imprint, Rotten Apple Entertainment.[51] 50 Cent executive produced Lloyd Banks's June 2004 debut studio album, The Hunger for More, which achieved Platinum status in America. 50 Cent also contributed vocals to Lloyd Banks's hit single, "On Fire". In March 2005, 50 Cent's second commercial album, The Massacre, sold 1.14 million copies in its first four days (the highest in an abbreviated sales cycle[47]) and was number one on the Billboard200 for six weeks.[52] He was the first solo artist with three singles in the Billboard top five in the same week with "Candy Shop", "Disco Inferno" and "How We Do".[53] According to Rolling Stone, "50's secret weapon is his singing voice - the deceptively amateur-sounding tenor croon that he deploys on almost every chorus".[54] 50 Cent's video game, 50 Cent: Bulletproof was released in November 2005. 50 Cent portrays himself and provides his likeness and voice in the video game, with the video game also featuring music from his first two studio albums.
2007–2010: Curtis, sales battle with Kanye West, and Before I Self Destruct
In September 2007, 50 Cent released his third album, Curtis, which was inspired by his life before Get Rich or Die Tryin'.[58] It debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling 691,000 copies during its first week.[59] It sold behind Kanye West's Graduation, released the same day; the outcome of this highly-publicized sales battle between Jackson and West has been accredited to the commercial decline of the gangsta rap and "bling era" style that previously dominated mainstream hip-hop.[60]
On the September 10, 2008, episode of Total Request Live, Jackson said his fourth studio album, Before I Self Destruct, would be "done and released in November". He released "Ok, You're Right", produced by Dr. Dre for Before I Self Destruct, on May 18, 2009, and was scheduled to appear in a fall 2009 episode of VH1's Behind the Music. On September 3, 2009, Jackson posted a video [61] for the Soundkillers' Phoenix-[62]produced track, "Flight 187", introducing his mixtape and book (The 50th Law). The song, with lyrics inspiring speculation about tension between Jackson and Jay-Z, was a bonus track on the iTunes version of Before I Self Destruct.[63]Before I Self Destruct was released on November 9, 2009 and debuted at number 5 on the Billboard 200, giving 50 Cent his fourth consecutive top 5 album in the U.S.[64]
2010–2015: New musical directions, new business ventures, and Animal Ambition
In a Contactmusic.com interview, Jackson said he was working on a Eurodance album, Black Magic, inspired by European nightclubs: "First they played hip-hop which suddenly changed to uptempo songs, known as Eurodance".[65] He later said he had changed his next album to The Return of the Heartless Monster after writing different material when he returned home from the Invitation Tour in 2010, shelving Black Magic.[66][67] On September 3, Jackson supported Eminem on his and Jay-Z's The Home & Home Tour, performing "Crack A Bottle" with Eminem and Dr. Dre amid rumors of tension between Jackson and Dre.[68][69]
He "recorded 20 songs to a whole different album concept" before putting them aside,[70] wanting his new album to have the "aggression" of Get Rich or Die Tryin'.[71][72] Jackson tweeted that the album was "80 percent done" and fans could expect it in the summer of 2011. It was ultimately delayed a year due to disagreements with Interscope Records, with Jackson saying that he would release it in November 2011[73] with a different title than Black Magic.[73] Eminem would appear on the album, and Jackson said he was working with new producers such as Boi-1da and Alex da Kid.[74]Cardiak, who produced Lloyd Banks' "Start It Up", confirmed that he produced a song for the upcoming album.[75]
50 Cent performing in 2011
Jackson released a song, "Outlaw", from his fifth album on the Internet on June 16, 2011.[76] The single, produced by Cardiak, was released on iTunes on July 19[77] (although Jackson tweeted that it was not the album's first single).[78] The rapper planned to write a semi-autobiographical young-adult novel about bullying, different from his previous books which focused on his life and the rules of power. According to the book's publisher, the first-person novel (about a 13-year-old schoolyard bully "who finds redemption as he faces what he's done")[79] was scheduled for publication in January 2012.
In a series of tweets, Jackson said that the delay of his fifth album was due to disagreements with Interscope Records,[73] later suggesting that it would be released in November 2011 with his headphone line (SMS by 50).[73] He speculated to MTV News about not renewing his five-album contract with Interscope: "I don't know ... It will all be clear in the negotiations following me turning this actual album in. And, of course, the performance and how they actually treat the work will determine whether you still want to stay in that position or not."[80]
On June 20, 2011, Jackson announced the release of Before I Self Destruct II after his fifth album.[81]Although he planned to shoot a music video for the fifth album's lead single, "I'm On It", on June 26[82] the video was never filmed.[83] Jackson told Shade45, "I did four songs in Detroit with Eminem. I did two with Just Blaze, a Boi-1da joint, and I did something with Alex da Kid. We made two that are definite singles and the other two are the kinds of records that we been making, more aimed at my core audience, more aggressive, more of a different kind of energy to it."[84] He released "Street King Energy Track #7" in September 2011 to promote Street King, his charity-based energy drink.[85] An announcement that Jackson was shooting a music video for "Girls Go Wild", the fifth-album lead single featuring Jeremih, was made on September 28, 2011.[86][87]
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