How 50 Cent went broke
CURTIS “50 Cent” Jackson didn’t actually feel the first round of
bullets hit his legs. He was too consumed with dealing with the shock of
it all.
Even in his volatile neighbourhood of South Jamaica, Queens, the May 2000 shooting that nearly took his life was brazen.
At
11:22am, in front of his grandmother’s home, the future rap superstar
was greeted by a hail of gunfire while his young son was just steps away
inside the house.
Nine bullets connected, slicing through
Jackson’s left cheek, his arms, legs, chest, hands and hip. The Queens
native and his associate Curtis Brown — who was hit in the hand — didn’t
wait around for the police or EMT, instead driving directly to Jamaica
Hospital.
“I was supposed to get shot,” 50 Cent told this reporter
back in 2007. He credited the experience with jump-starting his drive
for success — from former crack dealer to one of hip-hop’s most bankable
acts, selling nearly 30 million albums worldwide.
“I lost something in life that I didn’t find until after I was shot.
Initially, I was conditioned to believe in God. My grandparents took me
to church every Sunday … I lost that … along the way, but after taking
nine it was like, ‘How was that possible?’ ”
The Washington Post once estimated that 50 Cent was worth half a billion dollars.
Source: News Corp Australia
While plenty of rappers put up a tough front, 50 Cent walks
the walk. Besides that myth-making shooting, his history is littered
with vindictive actions against enemies — and even the occasional
bystander.
Things may have come to a head in July, when he filed for bankruptcy in Connecticut.
Eyebrows
were raised: How could a man whose wealth was estimated by the
Washington Post at half a billion dollars now be out of money?
Blame
it on living large — and brazenly reckless behaviour. The bankruptcy
filing comes on the heels of a court decision ordering him to pay $7
million to a woman whose sex tape he posted online without her consent.
The impetus? She dated his enemy.
With 50, there’s always drama, even if it’s manufactured.
According
to the DVD “The Infamous Times — Volume I: The Original 50 Cent,” the
rapper took his name from notorious Brooklyn thief Kelvin “50 Cent”
Martin. Vibe Editor-in-Chief Datwon Thomas — who featured the rapper on
that magazine’s August cover — points out that, “[Jackson] knew what he
was doing when he took on that name.”
“The original 50 Cent was a
gangster from Fort Greene, Brooklyn,” says Thomas. “If you lived in
Brooklyn [in the 1980s] you heard the name. He was … a powerful presence
in the streets.”
Jackson borrowed not just Martin’s name (the
latter died in 1987), but also his tough-guy swagger. In fact, Jackson’s
shooting was related to the fearless lyrics of his 2000 song “Ghetto
Qu’ran,” which called out a local drug boss’s criminal exploits.
US rapper 50 Cent was shot nine times and survived.
Source: Supplied
Investigators believe the drug boss hired Darryl “Hommo” Baum
to assassinate 50 in retaliation for the song. 50 declined to press
charges following the shooting, and Baum himself was killed three weeks
later. But that didn’t stop 50s braggadocio.
On his first big hit,
2003’s “In da Club,” 50 boasted about “my crib, my cars, my pools, my
jewels” as well as being “hit with a few shells but I don’t walk with a
limp.”
Warning: Graphic language
Fans loved it, buying some
25 million copies of his albums between 2003 and 2009. Black Eyed Peas
frontman will.i.am says that, at that time, there were not many stars
shining brighter than 50.
“In America, the only rap artists that
had 50 Cent’s international reach were the Black Eyed Peas,” will.i.am,
who recruited 50 for the remix of BEP’s No. 1 single “Boom Boom Pow,”
tells The Post. “He and I would always bump into each other in Italy,
Spain, Portugal and Germany. I don’t think people understand how huge 50
was [internationally].”
But while the original 50 Cent robbed
people, the rapper got rich thanks to sharp business acumen. He invested
early in Vitaminwater, then made a reported $60 to $100 million after
the company sold to Coca-Cola in 2007.
His once sizeable fortune
boasted endorsement deals for such products as Reebok, Right Guard and
the aforementioned Vitaminwater, as well as his own G-Unit Records and
G-Unit Clothing Company.
Recent roles in movies “Spy” and “Southpaw” netted him $100,000 — not even enough for his monthly expenses.
Source: Supplied
“50 Cent made around $300 million in two years,” says Zack
O’Malley Greenburg, Forbes senior editor, who has frequently covered the
rapper for Forbes’ annual Hip-Hop Cash Kings list. “He has always been
really good at profiting off whatever his situation is. He even marketed
getting shot nine times!”
Being shot didn’t turn 50 into an
anti-gun advocate. He appeared on the cover of his 2002 mixtape “Guess
Who’s Back?” menacingly pointing a pistol. The image fed into the public
perception of him as a take-no-prisoners badass.
“50 is an
aggressive rapper,” explains Vanessa Satten, editor-in-chief at XXL
magazine. “You have this guy walking around in a bulletproof vest,
backed by his crew and remaking other artists’ tracks. 50 basically
said, ‘I can take your song and make it better than you [did].’ ”
Among
his public beefs have been verbal and physical altercations with
rappers Jadakiss and the Game. A spat with Ja Rule led to 50 being
stabbed in March 2000 by Ja’s label mate Black Child.
But it’s his feud with rapper Rick Ross that’s about to do damage to 50s bank account.
The
two have traded jabs for years, with 50 singing, “I’m a f — k your life
up for fun,” and Ross rapping that 50 is cheap: “Curtis Jackson
baby-mama ain’t asking for a cent.” Now Ross’s baby-mama has taken 50 to
court — and won.
50 Cent has assets totalling $24,823,899.18. The court rulings pushed his debt to $32,509,549.91.
Source: Supplied
50 Cent was ordered to pay Lastonia Leviston $7 million this
past July for posting a sex tape online without Leviston’s consent. The
rapper bought the tape from the man in the video, Maurice Murray, and
added his own voice-over narration — referring to Leviston as a “slut”
and mocking her physical appearance.
Seemingly, the only connection 50 has to the woman is that she has a child with Ross, his rival.
50
claimed that he had nothing to do with the video hitting the web. In
late August, 50s legal counsel alleged in a Connecticut court that the
rapper was the victim of a shakedown.
“Ms. Leviston wants her
pound of flesh,” his lawyer, James Berman, said in filings. “It is not
enough that she obtained a jury verdict and assessment of punitive
damages … She wants to punish [Jackson] by continuing to litigate
against him in this bankruptcy case.”
‘I was supposed to get shot. I lost something in life that I didn’t find until after I was shot.’
- 50 Cent
“I hope he learned a lesson,” an emotional Leviston told the press after she won her case.
The
sum is in addition to the $17 million a federal judge ordered 50 to
hand over to headphone manufacturer Sleek Audio after an arbitration
hearing ruled that the G-Unit Records head copied the design of Sleek
Audio’s product.
50 Cent’s album Get Rich or Die Tryin'.
Source: News Limited
As a result, 50 promptly filed for bankruptcy. Per
Forbes, his assets total $24,823,899.18. The court rulings pushed his
debt to $32,509,549.91.
Papers from US Bankruptcy Court show that
50 takes in over $185,000 a month from marketing and promotional deals,
but spends $72,000 on his 18-bedroom Farmington, Conn., mansion — which
he is reportedly looking to lease — in addition to $108,000 in other
expenses.
In a surprising twist, though, 50 has claimed that the
luxe trappings — Bentleys and Ferraris, private jets, flashy jewellery —
he plays up on social media aren’t all they appear to be, and that he
actually borrows or rents many of them.
Though he admitted to buying a Rolls-Royce in July, he noted that he “took two others back.”
Court filings requested that details of an endorsement deal with Effen Vodka remain secret.
“No
entertainer wants the terms of its endorsement contracts made public
because … that disclosure would be disastrous by giving competitors an
unfair advantage,” the file stated.
Asked about album earnings, 50
said he made only 10 cents a record. Recent roles in movies “Spy” and
“Southpaw” netted him $100,000 — not even enough for his monthly
expenses.
The court, however, wasn’t buying it. 50 was promptly told to pay Sleek Audio and Leviston.
The
rapper’s latest studio album, 2014’s “Animal Ambition,” has sold just
under 200,000 copies. 50 moved five times that in his first week of
release during his commercial peak.
50 Cent performs "P.I.M.P." during the BET Awards in 2003.
Source: AP
But after cheating death and sparking a million-dollar label
bidding war just when he seemed destined to become a mere hip-hop
footnote, surviving bankruptcy and a few embarrassing headlines seems
like a walk in the park.
Back in 2000, as his bullet-riddled body
lay in a hospital bed, 50 was dropped by Columbia Records. He spent five
months in physical therapy, relearning how to rhyme with his new
bullet-inflected speech impediment.
“I think people that haven’t
been in those environments, they might ask you to go to counselling,” he
told XXL in August 2003 when asked how he got through those trying
times. “But that s — t is not really necessary for me. When I got out of
the hospital, I was out of town for a little bit. I wouldn’t let people
come see me in the hospital because I was bent up a little bit. I can’t
let them see me in a compromising space.”
“The [reason] that
Eminem and Dr. Dre signed him was based on the fact that 50 got up off
his butt, released those mixtapes and made the industry take notice,”
Vibe editor Thomas says. “He didn’t have any cosigns after he was shot.
Everyone had left him. That alone should tell you you should never bet
against 50.”
