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50 Cent

Love him or hate him, 50 Cent’s influence in the rap game is undeniable. While some rappers knowingly exaggerate or even completely fabricate claims of street cred and jail time, 50 Cent does not have to - he grew up hard. Born Curtis James Jackson III in the rough neighborhood of South Jamaica in New York City, he never got to meet his father and his mother was killed at the age of eight. By the time he moved into his grandmother’s home in 1983, Curtis began finding comfort in the streets.

Jackson began selling drugs just out of elementary school, and began boxing competitively at the age of fourteen - even competing in the Junior Olympics. He was arrested on drug and weapon related charges at the age of sixteen, and continued to sell drugs after his departure from high school to a military-style boot camp, where he eventually earned his GED. Curtis was arrested again in 1994, after selling cocaine to an undercover police officer. For all his time on the streets, though, Jackson did one thing right - he learned how to rap.

What began as a side project with a mixer in a friend’s basement became a passion. Adopting the moniker 50 Cent (a tribute to Kelvin Martin, a notorious Brooklyn gangster from the 1980’s who would rob anything from anyone - hence his nickname 50 Cent), Curtis learned the art of rap from one of the genre’s founders, Jam Master Jay, in the late 1990’s. 50 Even recorded an album with Jay, though it was never released. After releasing a number of semi-comical regionally infamous diss tracks - including "How To Rob", in which 50 outlines a plan to rob Jay-Z, Wu Tang Clan, DMX, and Mike Tyson - at the height of his amateur career, 50 Cent was attacked by an unknown assailant and shot nine times in early 2000. Though 50 survived with minimal injuries, his involvement in a shooting caused him to be blacklisted by the American music community at large, and 50 had to move to Canada to continue recording.

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  • mustafabamba on Fri May 8th, 2009 said...

    50 and rick ros should be biddies and just stop beaffing ova girls.. girls are like money they come and they go..rr and 50cent should make a song.. name..shes gone

  • Ezequiel on Mon Nov 10th, 2008 said...

    Dude your songs are totally knarly!!
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