50 Cent
"In Da Club"

All Eyes On
Knight Rider
Get Rich Or Die Tryin'
Blasted
Number One With Nine Bullets
Like A Donald Goines Novel
Media Maelstrom
The Streets Of San Francisco
The Next Big Thing
I Did It My Way

All Eyes On

"Undoubtedly 50 will be the hottest rapper this year," said Eminem. "I wish my first album was this hot."

Curtis Jackson a.k.a. 50 Cent is the biggest rapper to hit the scene since Tupac. His debut album, "Get Rich or Die Tryin' " was the only album released the day it came out. No contenders. Good reason too, the album slaughtered the charts, selling 872,000 copies in four days. No other debut artist has ever sold more albums their first week out.

Knight Rider

50 Cent is a big name and big names in this game have got to have the right gadgets. Any rapper worth there salt conveys an image of a superhero - from the tragic upbringing to the stylish wardrobe to the often-violent lifestyle to the super rides they arrive in. Rappers need the gadgets. His SUV may seem modest, being a Jeep Cherokee, but it has all the accessories: PlayStation 2, DVD player, tinted windows, stash box, 23-inch rims, speakers that can blow the wardrobe off the entire cast of his latest video - but these things are nothing new, what sets him apart is the ANTI-HAZARD package. In this case, anti-hazard means that the Jeep is bulletproof AND bombproof. Grenades can't even stop the fasting rising star in the rap world.

Get Rich Or Die Tryin'

America loves the black sheep. We crave the bad seeds. Rebels with or without a cause, all are applicable. 50 Cent was made to order for the masses. He's no saint and admits it openly. The term role model doesn't even get mentioned. Yet he's the biggest thing since customizable cell phone rings. Bad is good and 50 Cent has been ever so bad. He's a well-developed slice of raw reality for a society that is in love with extremes of reality. As in the film Natural Born Killers, "We love Mickey and Mallory Knox", well, we love 50 Cent!

Blasted

However, not everyone seems to love 50 Cent as much as we do. Back in 2000 he was riddled with bullets while he sat in the backseat of a car outside his grandmother's place in Queens. He was shot several times in the leg and in his arm, his right thumb and mouth. The wounds left him in the hospital for 13 days with five months of rehab during which he had to use a walker to get around. The workout regimen and physical therapy eventually led him to his current physique and his voice has been permanently changed due to the wounds. As mentioned, the lives of rappers often emulate those of comic book superheroes.

Number One With Nine Bullets

As if 50 Cent isn't spreading his word large and far enough through his music, he is currently making the rounds with New York publishers attempting to sell the rights to his life story. The 26-year-old rapper is seeking a high six-figure sum for his memoirs titled, "Number One with Nine Bullets". The book is to be written in conjunction with writer, Vanessa Satten of XXL Magazine.

Like A Donald Goines Novel

Just how interesting or different could his life be to demand such a lofty sum and bound tome of pages? Murder. Drugs. The real thug life. Well the proposal for the book deems that it would cover the rapper's dramatic life history - from his drug lord mother being gunned down when he was 8 to his own hustling past to getting shot nine times to hooking up with Dr. Dre and Eminem. The rebel life. The kind of story we love.

Media Maelstrom

50 Cent is a media goldmine. 50's been in the headlines on numerous occasions since signing with Em and Dre back in September. It's just that the headlines are rarely about his chart topping tunes and more about his high-octane social jamboree. Past reports have erroneously linked him to the murder of his former mentor Jam Master Jay. 50 and G-Unit were arrested on New Year's Eve in New York City for gun possession. 50 and G-Unit's Lloyd Banks made bail, but Tony Yayo remains in jail on prior charges.

The Streets Of San Francisco

"I don't get worked up or excited about situations I can't control because it's not in my power, so I might appear crazy to some people," states 50. But fans in San Francisco were a little more active in their adulation. A recent 50 Cent show was canceled in the little big city when thousands of ticketless fans congregated outside the venue blocking on-coming traffic.

The Next Big Thing

50 now has to hold meetings with execs at Interscope due to his run-ins with the law. In a recent MTV interview he stated that, "Dre will pull me to the side and tell me to stay focused. I told him in the beginning that my intentions weren't to be trouble. Nobody wants to buy a problem. And with my background, there's a possibility that they'd be purchasing the biggest problem that they've ever found. But because they believed me when I told them I wanted to make music, we were able to progress."

I Did It My Way

50 does it his way. That's why the fans like him. He has an allegiance to the streets that spawned him.
It's where he's from and he constantly returns to that point with creative endeavors. He feeds his own mix-tape circuit by releasing new songs, freestyles and his own versions of other artists' cuts via his own G-Unit CDs and DJ's mix-tapes. All the better for the buzz. With this, 50 Cent owns the streets of New York and where New York goes, the nation follows.