Curtis James Jackson III better known by his stage name 50 Cent, is an American rapper and actor. He rose to fame with the release of his albums Get Rich or Die Tryin’ (2003) and The Massacre (2005). Get Rich or Die Tryin has been certified 8 times platinum by the RIAA and has sold over 15 million copies worldwide. His album The Massacre has been certified 5 times platinum by the RIAA and has sold 11 million copies worldwide.
Born in South Jamaica, Queens, Jackson began drug dealing at the age of twelve during the 1980s crack epidemic. After leaving drug dealing to pursue a rap career, he was shot at and struck by nine bullets during an incident in 2000. After releasing his album Guess Who’s Back? in 2002, Jackson was discovered by rapper Eminem and signed to Interscope Records. With the help of Eminem and Dr. Dre, who produced his first major commercial successes, Jackson became one of the world’s highest selling rappers. In 2003, he founded the record label G-Unit Records, which signed several successful rappers such as Young Buck, Lloyd Banks, and Tony Yayo.
Jackson has engaged in feuds with other rappers including Kanye West, Ja Rule, Fat Joe, Jadakiss, Cam’ron, Rick Ross, and former G-Unit members The Game and Young Buck. He has also pursued an acting career, appearing in the semi-autobiographical film Get Rich or Die Tryin’ in 2005, the Iraq War film Home of the Brave in 2006, and Righteous Kill in 2008. 50 Cent was ranked as the 6th best artist of the 2000-2009 decade by “Billboard Magazine.” (Also ranking as the 4th Top male artist and as the 3rd Top rapper behind Eminem and Nelly)
He was also ranked as the 6th best and most successful Hot 100 Artist of the 2000-2009 decade by Billboard Magazine. Billboard Magazine also named him the #1 Rap Song Artist of the 2000-2009 decade. His album Get Rich or Die Tryin’ was ranked as the 12th best album of the 2000-2009 decade by Billboard Magazine and the album The Massacre ranking as the 37th best album of the 2000-2009 decade by Billboard Magazine
Curtis Jackson III grew up in the South Jamaica neighborhood of Queens, in New York City. He grew up without a father and was raised by his mother, Sabrina, who gave birth to him at the age of fifteen. Sabrina, a cocaine dealer, raised Jackson until the age of twelve, when she was murdered in 1988. Twenty-seven at the time, she became unconscious after someone drugged her drink. She was then left for dead after the gas in her apartment was turned on and the windows shut closed. After her death, Jackson moved into his grandparents’ house with his eight aunts and uncles. He recalls, “My grandmother told me, ‘Your mother’s not coming home. She’s not gonna come back to pick you up. You’re gonna stay with us now.’ That’s when I started adjusting to the streets a little bit”.
Jackson began boxing around the age of eleven. At fourteen, a neighbor opened a boxing gym for local kids. “When I wasn’t killing time in school, I was sparring in the gym or selling crack on the strip”, he recalled. In the mid 1980s, he competed in the Junior Olympics as an amateur boxer. He recounts, “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”. At the age of twelve, Jackson began dealing narcotics when his grandparents thought he was at after-school programs.
He also took guns and drug money to school. In the tenth grade, he was caught by metal detectors at Andrew Jackson High School. He later stated, “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.’”
On June 29, 1994, Jackson was arrested for helping to sell 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 starter gun. He was sentenced to three to nine years in prison, but managed to serve six months in a shock incarceration boot camp where he earned his GED. Jackson said that he did not use cocaine himself, he only sold it. He adopted the nickname “50 Cent” as a metaphor for “change”. The name was derived from Kelvin Martin, a 1980s Brooklyn robber known as “50 Cent”. Jackson chose the name “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”.
Jackson started rapping in a friend’s basement where he used turntables to record over instrumentals. In 1996, a friend introduced him to Jam Master Jay of Run-DMC who was organizing his label Jam Master Jay Records. Jay taught him how to count bars, write choruses, structure songs, and how to make a record. Jackson’s first official appearance was on a song titled “React” with the group Onyx on their 1998 album Shut ‘Em Down. He credited Jam Master Jay as an influence who helped him improve his ability to write hooks.
Jay produced Jackson’s first album; however, it was never released. In 1999, after leaving Jam Master Jay, the platinum-selling producers Trackmasters took notice of Jackson and signed him to Columbia Records. They sent him to a studio in Upstate New York where he produced thirty-six songs in two weeks. Eighteen were included on his unofficially released album, Power of the Dollar in 2000. He also started the now-defunct Hollow Point Entertainment with former G-Unit affiliate Bang ‘Em Smurf.
Jackson’s popularity started to increase after the successful but controversial underground single, “How to Rob”, which he wrote in half an hour while in a car on the way to a studio. The track comically explains how he would rob famous artists. He explained the reasoning behind song’s content as, “There’s a hundred artists on that label, you gotta separate yourself from that group and make yourself relevant”. Rappers Jay-Z, Kurupt, Sticky Fingaz, Big Pun, DMX, Wyclef Jean and the Wu-Tang Clan replied to the song and Nas, who received the track positively, invited Jackson to travel on a promotional tour for his Nastradamus album. The song was intended to be released with “Thug Love” featuring Destiny’s Child, but two days before he was scheduled to film the “Thug Love” music video, Jackson was shot and confined to a hospital due to his injuries.
On April 24, 2000, Jackson was attacked by a gunman, alleged to be Darryl “Hommo” Baum, outside his grandmother’s former home in South Jamaica, Queens. He went into a friend’s car, but was asked to return to the house to get jewelry. His son was in the house, while his grandmother was in the front yard. Upon returning to the back seat of the car, another car pulled up nearby. An assailant then walked up to Jackson’s left side with a 9mm handgun and fired nine shots at close range. He was shot nine times: in the hand (a round hit his right thumb and came out of his little finger), arm, hip, both legs, chest, and left cheek. The face wound resulted in a swollen tongue, the loss of a wisdom tooth, and a small slur in his voice. Get Rich or Die Tryin’: The Movie (2003) (bonus documentary DVD). Interscope Records. His friend also sustained a gunshot wound to the hand. They were driven to the hospital where Jackson spent thirteen days. Baum, the alleged shooter, was killed three weeks later. Baum was also Mike Tyson’s close friend and bodyguard.
Jackson recalled the incident saying, “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.’” 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”. He used a walker for the first six weeks and fully recovered after five months. When he left the hospital, he stayed in the Poconos with his then-girlfriend and son. His workout regime helped him attain his muscular physique.
While in the hospital, Jackson signed a publishing deal with Columbia Records. However, he was dropped from the label and “blacklisted” in the recording industry because of his song “Ghetto Qu’ran”. Unable to find a studio to work with in the U.S, he traveled to Canada. Along with his business partner Sha Money XL, he recorded over thirty songs for mixtapes, with the purpose of building a reputation. According to Shady Records A&R Marc Labelle in an interview with HitQuarters, Jackson shrewdly used the mixtape circuit to his own advantage saying, “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.” Jackson’s popularity rose and in 2002, he released material independently on the mixtape, Guess Who’s Back?. Beginning to attract interest, and now backed by G-Unit, Jackson continued to release music including 50 Cent Is the Future. The mixtape revisited material by Jay-Z and Raphael Saadiq.
In 2002, Eminem listened to a copy of Jackson’s Guess Who’s Back? CD. He received the CD through Jackson’s attorney, who was working with Eminem’s manager Paul Rosenberg. Impressed with the album, Eminem invited Jackson to fly to Los Angeles, where he was introduced to Dr. Dre. After signing a $1 million record deal, Jackson released the mixtape, No Mercy, No Fear. It featured one new track, “Wanksta”, which was put on Eminem’s 8 Mile soundtrack. He was also signed to Chris Lighty’s Violator Management and Sha Money XL’s Money Management Group.
In February 2003, Jackson released his commercial debut album, Get Rich or Die Tryin’. Allmusic described it as “probably the most hyped debut album by a rap artist in about a decade”. Rolling Stone noted the album for its “dark synth grooves, buzzy keyboards and a persistently funky bounce” with Jackson complementing the production in “an unflappable, laid-back flow”. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 872,000 copies in the first four days. The lead single, “In da Club”, which The Source noted for its “blaring horns, funky organs, guitar riffs and sparse hand claps”, broke a Billboard record as the most listened-to song in radio history within a week.
Interscope granted Jackson his own label, G-Unit Records in 2003. He signed Lloyd Banks, Tony Yayo, and Young Buck as the established members of G-Unit. The Game was later signed under a joint venture with Dr. Dre’s Aftermath Entertainment. In March 2005, Jackson’s second commercial album, The Massacre, sold 1.14 million copies in the first four days-the highest in an abbreviated sales cycle- and peaked at number one on the Billboard 200 for six weeks. He became the first solo artist to have three singles on the Billboard top five in the same week with “Candy Shop”, “Disco Inferno”, and “How We Do”. Rolling Stone noted that “50′s secret weapon is his singing voice – the deceptively amateur-sounding tenor croon that he deploys on almost every chorus”.
After The Game’s departure, Jackson signed singer Olivia and rap veterans Mobb Deep to G-Unit Records. Spider Loc, M.O.P., 40 Glocc and Young Hot Rod later joined the label. Jackson expressed interest in working with rappers outside of G-Unit, such as Lil’ Scrappy of BME, LL Cool J from Def Jam, Mase from Bad Boy, and Freeway of Roc-A-Fella, some of whom he recorded with.
In September 2007, he released his third album Curtis, which was inspired by his life before Get Rich or Die Tryin’. It debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling 691,000 units in the first week, behind Kanye West’s Graduation, whom he had a sales competition with, as both albums were released on the same day. He confirmed on TRL on September 10, 2008 that his fourth studio album, Before I Self Destruct, will be “done and released in November”. On May 18, 2009, Jackson released a song entitled “Ok, You’re Right”.
The song was produced by Dr. Dre and will be included in Before I Self Destruct. In Fall 2009, 50 is set to appear in the new season of VH1′s Behind The Music. On September 3, 2009 months upon the release of his “Before I Self Destruct” album 50 Cent posted a video for the Soundkillers’ Phoenix produced track “Flight 187″ which introduced his mixtape, the 50th LAW, and was also featured as a bonus track on his iTunes release of Before I Self Destruct. The song ignited speculation that there was tension between rapper 50 Cent and Jay Z for Jackson’s comments in the song.
He went on The Invitation Tour in the summer of 2010, in support of Before I Self Destruct album, and the shelved Black Magic album. On September 3rd, 50 Cent showed support to longtime mentor Eminem, and appeared on his and Jay-Z’s Home & Home Tour, performing hit songs such as “Crack A Bottle,” alongside his longtime mentors Eminem & Dr. Dre, amidst rumors that 50 was no longer working with Dre.
Jackson has established himself in a variety of fields. In November 2003, he signed a five year deal with Reebok to distribute a “G-Unit Sneakers” line as part of his G-Unit Clothing Company. He provided the voice-over as the protagonist in the video game, 50 Cent: Bulletproof, which was released for PlayStation 2, Xbox, and the PlayStation Portable. Its sequel, 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, was released in early 2009.
He worked with Glacéau to create a Vitamin Water drink called Formula 50. In 2007, Coca-Cola purchased Glacéau for US$4.1 billion. Forbes estimated Jackson, who owns a stake in the company, earned $100 million from the deal after taxes. He has teamed up with Right Guard to launched a body spray called Pure 50 RGX Body Spray and a condom line called Magic Stick Condoms, in which he planned to donate part of the proceeds to HIV awareness. Jackson has signed a multi-year deal with Steiner Sports to sell his memorabilia.
In 2005, Jackson made a cameo appearance on The Simpsons episode “Pranksta Rap”, in which he makes light of his legal troubles. The same year, he starred alongside Terrence Howard in the semi-autobiographical film Get Rich or Die Tryin’. He starred in the 2006 film, Home of the Brave, as a soldier returning home from the Iraq War, traumatized after killing an Iraqi woman. Jackson is working on a role as a fighter in an Angola State Prison in Spectacular Regret alongside Nicolas Cage, and starred opposite Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in 2008′s Righteous Kill, a movie regarding a police death. He also started the film production companies G-Unit Films in 2007 and Cheetah Vision in 2008. In August 2007, Jackson announced plans to launch a dietary supplement company in conjunction with his movie Spectacular Regret.
In August, 2005, shortly before appearing in Get Rich or Die Tryin’, Jackson published an autobiography entitled From Pieces to Weight: Once upon a Time in Southside Queens. In it Jackson explores the cultural and economic forces that led him to sell cocaine and crack, details his entrepreneurship as a drug-dealer and then as a rapper, and reflects on his own ethos and on society. On January 4, 2007, Jackson launched his G-Unit Books imprint at the Time Warner Building.
He also co-wrote The Ski Mask Way, a novel about a small-time drug dealer who attempts to rob his employers, which is to be turned into a film. Jackson said he read Robert Greene’s The 33 Strategies of War and worked with the author on a book titled The 50th Law, an urban take on The 48 Laws of Power. In May 2008, Jackson met billionaire Patrice Motsepe to forge a joint venture selling 50 Cent-branded platinum.
In 2008, Jackson started a reality television show on MTV titled 50 Cent: The Money and the Power; the winning contestant, Ryan Mayberry, won a $100,000 investment from Jackson. In 2010, Jackson’s film company Cheetah Vision landed $200 million in funding.
On October 13, 1997, Jackson’s then-girlfriend Shaniqua Tompkins gave birth to a son, Marquise Jackson. Tompkins later sued Jackson for $50 million dollars, claiming that he said that he would take care of her for life; the suit, which includes 15 claims was later dismissed by a judge, calling it “an unfortunate tale of a love relationship gone sour.” As of February 2009, Tompkins’ and her lawyer are considering an appeal.
The birth of his son changed Jackson’s outlook on life: “When my son came into my life, my priorities changed, because I wanted to have the relationship with him, that I didn’t have with my father.” He credited his son for inspiring his career and being “motivation to go in a different direction”.
Jackson has a tattoo of “Marquise” with an axe on his right biceps. “The axe is ’cause I’m a warrior. I don’t want him to be one, though,” he explains. He also has “50″, “Southside”, and “Cold World” inscribed on his back because “I’m a product of that environment. It’s on my back, though, so it’s all behind me.” Jackson dated actress Vivica A. Fox in 2003. After a few months, he announced their split up on The Howard Stern Show when pictures from a photo shoot they did ended up on the cover of Today’s Black Woman magazine without his knowledge.
In 2005, Jackson expressed support for President George W. Bush after rapper Kanye West criticized him for the slow response in assisting the Hurricane Katrina victims. If his felony convictions did not prevent him from voting, he claimed he would have voted for Bush. He later stated that Bush “has less compassion than the average human. By all means, I don’t aspire to be like George Bush.”
In 2007, Forbes recognized Jackson for his wealth, placing him second behind Jay-Z in the rap industry. He resides in Farmington, Connecticut, in the former mansion of ex-boxer Mike Tyson. He put the mansion for sale at $18.5 million to move closer to his son who lives in Long Island with his ex-girlfriend.
On October 12, 2007, the Mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut declared it “50 Cent Curtis Jackson Day”. He was honored with a key to the city and an official proclamation. One of his homes in New York purchased for 2.4 million dollars in January 2007 and at the center of a lawsuit between Jackson and ex-girlfriend Shaniqua Tompkins caught fire on May 31, 2008 while he was out of town filming for a movie in Louisiana.
In December 2008 50 told the Canadian press that he had been affected by the recession, losing several million dollars on the stock market. He also went on to say that he had been unable to sell his Connecticut mansion and pushed Before I Self-Destruct back because of the recent economic downturn. In November 2009, 50 Cent won in a lawsuit against Taco Bell over the fast food chain using his name to promote the brand without his permission.
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