On May 24, 2000, just before Columbia was set to release Power of the Dollar, an assassin attempted to take 50 Cent's life on 161st Street in Jamaica, Queens (near where Jam Master Jay would later be fatally shot two and half years later), shooting him nine times with a 9mm pistol while the rapper sat helpless in the passenger seat of a car. Shortly afterward came his most storied incident. His first post-success brush with death came shortly after the release of 'How to Rob,' when he was stabbed at the Hit Factory studio on West 54th Street in Manhattan.
A trio of singles preceded the album's proposed release: 'Your Life's on the Line,' 'Thug Love' (featuring Destiny's Child), and 'How to Rob.' The latter generated a significant buzz, attracting a lot of attention for its baiting lyrics, which detail how 50 Cent would rob specific big-name rappers.This willingness to rap openly and brashly and the attention it attracted came back to haunt him, however. Trackmasters signed the rapper to their Columbia sublabel and began work on his debut album, Power of the Dollar. Not much resulted from the deal, though, and 50 Cent affiliated himself with Trackmasters, a commercially successful New York-based production duo known for their work with such artists as Nas and Jay-Z. Impressed by what he heard, Jay signed the aspiring rapper to his JMJ Records label. His break came in 1996 when he met Run-D.M.C.'s Jam Master Jay, who gave him a tape of beats and asked him to rap over it. It's around this point in time that he traded crime for hip-hop.
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The crack trade proved lucrative for 50 Cent, until he eventually encountered the law, that is, and got arrested repeatedly in 1994. As a teen, he followed the lead of his mother and began hustling. His hustler mother passed away when he was only eight, and his father departed soon after, leaving his grandmother to parent him. By the time of his third album (Curtis, 2007), however, 50 Cent faced a formidable backlash, particularly among hip-hop purists, who were displeased by his turn toward crossover pop-rap and thus away from street-level credibility.Born Curtis James Jackson III on July 6, 1975, and raised in Southside Jamaica, Queens, New York City, 50 Cent grew up in a broken home. He helped his G-Unit crew grow into a successful franchise, spawning platinum-selling solo albums for his group members, lucrative licensing deals for the brand name, and sell-out arena tours to promote the franchise internationally. And too, 50 Cent didn't forget about his posse. As a result, his music crossed over to the pop market, appealing to both those who liked his roughneck posturing and rags-to-riches story as well as those who liked his knack for churning out naughty singalong club tracks. But all-importantly, 50 Cent may have fit the mold of a prototypical hardcore rapper, but he could also craft a catchy hook. He even looked like the ideal East Coast hardcore rapper: big-framed with oft-showcased biceps, abs, and tattoos as well as his trademark bulletproof vest, pistol, and iced crucifix.
He reveled in his oft-told past, he called out wannabe gangstas, and he made headlines.
Of course, such experiences became 50 Cent's rhetorical stock-in-trade. The product of a broken home in the rough Jamaica neighborhood of Queens and, in turn, the storied hood's hustling streets themselves, 50 Cent lived everything most rappers write rhymes about but not all actually experience: drugs, crimes, imprisonments, stabbings, and most infamously of all, shootings. Following an unsuccessful late-'90s run at mainstream success (foiled by an attempt on his life in 2000) and a successful run on the New York mixtape circuit (driven by his early-2000s bout with Ja Rule), Eminem signed 50 Cent to a seven-figure contract in 2002 and helmed his quick rise toward crossover success in 2003. Though he would later struggle with the nature of his fame as well as market expectations, 50 Cent endured substantial obstacles throughout his young yet remarkably dramatic life before becoming the most discussed figure in rap, if not pop music in general, circa 2003.
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