50 Cent

• 1. Introduction

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  50 Cent was shot nine times at close range outside his grandmother's former home in South Jamaica, Queens, on the 24th of May 2000. The gunman fired with a 9mm handgun. The bullets struck his hand, arm, hip, both legs, chest, and left cheek. His facial wound swelled his tongue and cost him a wisdom tooth, leaving a slight slur in his speech that would become one of the most recognizable voices in music. He spent 13 days in the hospital and used a walker for six weeks. When he finally recovered, the recording industry had blacklisted him. His debut album for Columbia Records had been shelved. He had nowhere to go but the streets and the mixtape circuit. What came next was a rise so steep it reshaped commercial hip-hop. But before the Billboard records and the Grammy, before the $100 million VitaminWater payout and the bankruptcy filing, there was a boy on 134th Avenue selling crack while his grandparents thought he was at after-school programs.

• 2. South Jamaica to Southside Queens

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  Curtis James Jackson III was born on the 6th of July 1975 and raised in the South Jamaica neighborhood of Queens, New York City, on 134th Avenue near Guy R. Brewer Boulevard. His mother, Sabrina, was a drug dealer who raised him largely on her own. She died in a fire when Jackson was eight years old. His father departed, and his grandparents took over raising him. Jackson began boxing at around age 11, and when he was 14 a neighbor opened a gym for local youth. He described his adolescence plainly: "When I wasn't killing time in school, I was sparring in the ring or selling crack on the strip." By age 12 he was bringing guns and drug money to school while his grandparents believed he was in after-school programs. On the 29th of June 1994, he was arrested for selling four vials of cocaine to an undercover officer. Three weeks later police searched his home and found heroin, ten ounces of crack cocaine, and a starting pistol. Sentenced to three to nine years, he served six months in a boot camp and earned his GED. He has said he never used cocaine himself. His stage name was drawn from Kelvin Martin, a 1980s Brooklyn robber known as "50 Cent." Jackson explained: "I'm the same kind of person 50 Cent was. I provide for myself by any means."

• 3. Jam Master Jay and the Mixtape Road

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  In 1996, a friend introduced Jackson to Jam Master Jay of Run-DMC, who was building his own label, Jam Master Jay Records. Jay taught him to count bars, write choruses, structure songs, and make records. The relationship became foundational. Jackson credited Jay with sharpening his ability to write hooks, and Jay produced Jackson's first, unreleased album. In 1997, A&R executive Irv Gotti rejected demo tapes Jay brought him, saying they sounded too similar to Jay-Z. Jackson's first professional appearance came the following year on "React" with Onyx. After leaving Jay's orbit in 1999, the platinum-selling producers Trackmasters signed him to Columbia Records and sent him to an upstate New York studio, where he recorded 36 songs in two weeks; 18 of them were slated for his album Power of the Dollar. The controversial underground single "How to Rob" built early notoriety: Jackson wrote the track in a half-hour car ride and it described, comedically, how he would rob famous artists. Jay-Z, Kurupt, Nas, and the Wu-Tang Clan all responded. Two days before he was scheduled to film a video for "Thug Love" with Destiny's Child, the shooting happened. After recovering, blacklisted and unable to record in U.S. studios, Jackson went to Canada. With business partner Sha Money XL he recorded more than 30 songs for mixtapes. Marc Labelle of Shady Records A&R described the strategy: "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."

• 4. Get Rich or Die Tryin

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  In 2002, Eminem received Jackson's mixtape Guess Who's Back? through Jackson's attorney, who was working with Eminem's manager Paul Rosenberg. Eminem flew Jackson to Los Angeles and introduced him to Dr. Dre. After signing a $1 million record deal, Jackson released the mixtape No Mercy, No Fear, which featured "Wanksta" on Eminem's 8 Mile soundtrack. His debut album Get Rich or Die Tryin' arrived in February 2003. AllMusic called it "probably the most hyped debut album by a rap artist in about a decade." Rolling Stone described its "dark synth grooves, buzzy keyboards and a persistently funky bounce." It sold 872,000 copies in its first four days and debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. The lead single "In da Club," which The Source noted for its "blaring horns, funky organs, guitar riffs and sparse hand claps," set a Billboard record as the most listened-to song in radio history within a single week. Two singles from the album reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100: "In da Club" and "21 Questions," the latter featuring Nate Dogg. The Recording Industry Association of America awarded the album Multiple Platinum certification. Also in 2003, Jackson founded G-Unit Records, signing Lloyd Banks, Tony Yayo, and Young Buck. Interscope began funding and distributing the label. The Game was later added in a joint venture with Dr. Dre's Aftermath Entertainment. Rolling Stone later placed the album at number 37 on its list of the "100 Best Albums of the 2000s," and ranked "In da Club" at number 13 on its "100 Best Songs of the 2000s."

• 5. The Massacre and the Sales Battle

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  In March 2005, The Massacre sold 1.14 million copies in its first four days, the highest figure for any album in an abbreviated sales cycle at the time. It held number one on the Billboard 200 for six weeks. Jackson became the first solo artist to place three singles in the Billboard top five simultaneously: "Candy Shop," "Disco Inferno," and "How We Do" all charted at the same time. Rolling Stone attributed part of that success to an unlikely asset: "50's secret weapon is his singing voice, the deceptively amateur-sounding tenor croon that he deploys on almost every chorus." That same year his semi-autobiographical film Get Rich or Die Tryin', in which he starred, was released to negative critical reception. His video game, 50 Cent: Bulletproof, arrived in November 2005, with Jackson providing his likeness, voice, and music from both studio albums. His third album, Curtis, released in September 2007, told a different story. It debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling 691,000 copies its first week, but it sold behind Kanye West's Graduation, which came out the same day. The outcome of that highly publicized sales battle has been described as marking the commercial decline of the gangsta rap style that had dominated mainstream hip-hop. Jackson aimed to recapture his earlier sound with Animal Ambition in 2014, which debuted at number four on the Billboard 200 and number one on Billboard's Independent Albums chart, giving him a fifth consecutive top-five album. It received mixed reviews.

• 6. Business Empire and Bankruptcy

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  Jackson's investment in Glaceau, maker of VitaminWater, stands as one of the most lucrative celebrity business deals of the 2000s. In October 2004, he became a minority shareholder in exchange for serving as a spokesperson after discovering the product at a Los Angeles gym. He collaborated with the company to create a grape-flavored "Formula 50" variant. In 2007, Coca-Cola purchased Glaceau for $4.1 billion; according to Forbes, Jackson earned $100 million after taxes from the sale. In November 2003, he signed a five-year deal with Reebok to distribute a G-Unit Sneakers line. He signed a $78 million deal with luxury underwear brand FRIGO Revolution Wear in December 2014, with basketball player Carmelo Anthony and baseball player Derek Jeter as joint-venture partners. He launched G-Unit Books on the 4th of January 2007 at the Time Warner Building in New York; his memoir From Pieces to Weight sold 73,000 copies in hardcover and 14,000 copies in paperback. In 2011, Jackson launched SMS Audio, selling Street by 50 headphones while pledging a portion of sales to charity. Despite this accumulated wealth, he filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on the 13th of July 2015 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Connecticut, listing debts of $32,509,549.91. Legal judgments exceeding $20 million over the prior year, including a $5 million jury award to Rick Ross's ex-girlfriend Lastonia Leviston and a $17.2 million judgment in the Sleek headphones dispute, were identified as primary causes. His Connecticut bankruptcy filing listed seven cars valued at more than $500,000, monthly expenses of $108,000, and a monthly income of $185,000 from royalties and external businesses.

• 7. Power, Television, and the Later Career

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  Power, a crime drama created by Courtney A. Kemp, debuted on Starz on the 7th of June 2014. Jackson co-starred as Kanan Stark and served as executive producer. The second-season premiere drew 1.43 million viewers, the highest in the show's run. Power ended on the 9th of February 2020 after six seasons. Jackson went on to executive-produce three spin-offs: Power Book II: Ghost, Power Book III: Raising Kanan, and Power Book IV: Force. His production company, G-Unit Film and Television, Inc., maintains offices in Shreveport, Louisiana, under a 45-year lease with the state. In September 2021, Starz began airing BMF, a biographical series about the Black Mafia Family, with Jackson as executive producer and performer of the theme song "Wish Me Luck" alongside Charlie Wilson, Moneybagg Yo, and Snoop Dogg. On the 13th of February 2022, Jackson made a surprise appearance in the Super Bowl LVI halftime show; in September of that year the performance earned a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety Special (Live). In December 2024 he launched a Las Vegas residency titled "50 Cent: In da Club." Jackson also announced plans to executive-produce Sean Combs: The Reckoning for Netflix, a documentary about the sexual misconduct allegations against Sean Combs; it was released in December 2025. In January 2025, Den of Thieves 2: Pantera was released, a sequel to the 2018 film in which Jackson starred; he executive-produced the follow-up alongside O'Shea Jackson Jr. Billboard ranked Jackson 17th on its "50 Greatest Rappers" list in 2023 and named him the sixth top artist of the 2000s decade. He has sold over 30 million albums worldwide.