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450 Cent Interview: Money to Burn
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 A Playstation 2 system, DVD player, speakers loud enough to make your ears bleed, tinted windows, stash box and 23-inch rims are all must-haves for any A-list MC who's not travelling the road by tour bus or limo. But when you're Curtis Jackson, a.k.a. 50 Cent, your SUV has a little something extra."That's level four right there," 50 said while sitting in the backseat of his Jeep Cherokee, en route to Miami's Cristal Night Club. "It's bulletproof and bombproof."
Yes, bombproof. As in grenades won't stop it. K.I.T.T. from "Knight Rider," bow down.
"Bombproof," 50 said again with a chuckle. "The president be riding around in sh-- like this."
50 may not yet have as much juice as old Dubya does around the country, but for hip-hop fans, the Queens heavyweight is the chief that all hail. There is no one else.
Really. No one. 50's debut, "Get Rich or Die Tryin'", was the only album in the States to be released the day it came out, February 6. Despite having to be moved up from its original February 11 street date because of bootlegging the week prior, and despite that fact it was only on sale for four days rather than the usual six before the SoundScan tally came in, the album marauded its way to the pinnacle of the Billboard albums chart, selling a staggering 872,000 copies. No debut artist has ever sold more albums their first week out.
"50's got the biggest buzz in a long time, as far as on a street level," DJ Clue said of the mania surrounding the MC. "He's got people going crazy. It's the same kind of feeling as when [the Notorious] B.I.G. first dropped his stuff."
"I love the 50 Cent album," Diddy said at his recent New York fashion show as cuts from "Get Rich..." blared through the venue. "I've never really felt anticipation on an artist like that and I've dealt with Biggie and watched Dr. Dre and Snoop. This is a new type of beast."
50's mass appeal is not that much of a mystery. At a time when many MCs are obviously rhyming fairytales, hip-hop fans believe 50 when he spits those vivid life narratives and love him for having the audacity to talk about them.
"To me, rappers are liars until I see that their actions coincide with what they said through the music," 50 explained. "Me, I put my situations down and I make fun of them. Like I say, 'I gotta dimple on my face .../ I can go after Mase fanbase.' I got shot in the face. That's not a funny thing. It's not a joke, you could die. I make fun of those situations 'cause I'm not in control of these situations and I feel like to be upset or down about something I can't control is just being weak and wasting energy."
Add the realism (often delivered in a southern twang) to those beguiling melodies and catch phrases that stay in your head, throw in the humorous punch lines - such as when he compares his longtime nemesis, Ja Rule, to the Cookie Monster on the dis record "Back Down" - and you have that rare artist who gets love from both the 'hood and the 'burbs. Nowadays you can't buy a mixtape that doesn't include a cut from 50 Cent or his group the G-Unit. And 50 hit #1 on MTV's "TRL" faster than any debut artist, ever. Yet the chiseled wordsmith sees room for improvement.
"I'm almost the hottest rapper," he insisted as his Jeep pulled up to the club. "I signed a deal with the hottest rapper."
That would be Eminem, of course. While 50 rides around with more armor on his vehicle than the pope, wears a bulletproof vest for added protection, has already been shot nine times and talks about constantly being watched by the police, the only people the world's most-talked-about MC fears are those who believe in him the most - his bosses, Marshall and Andre.
"I fear not fitting in with Eminem and Dr. Dre," 50 explained earlier in the day while sitting in a Miami studio. "That's what counts to me. That other stuff [the threat of violence] has already been a part of my life, none of that is new. They signed me, so I'll never be equivalent to Eminem or Dr. Dre. If Em says I'm the future of music, then what he's saying is he's the future of music because he signed me."
"I didn't know it was going to be this big of a problem," Em, hiding a smile, joked about 50's notoriety while on the set of the "In Da Club" video.
Maybe if Em and Dre hadn't caused their own media maelstroms throughout the years, the controversial duo would've been alarmed by now. Since Shady/Aftermath inked their newest signee in September, 50's been in the headlines repeatedly, though not for his music.
Reports erroneously linked him to the murder of his former mentor Jam Master Jay. 50 and the G-Unit were arrested on New Year's Eve in New York for gun possession (although 50 and the G-Unit's Lloyd Banks made bail, the third member, Tony Yayo, is still in jail for prior charges). A few weeks later, the offices of Violator, the company that manages the beefed-up Queens MC, were riddled by bullets, by gunmen who are still on the loose. Most recently, a 50 club date in San Francisco was canceled because thousands of ticketless fans were congregating outside and stopping traffic.
The rapper shrugs it all off. "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," he said.
Those working with rap's Next Big Thing aren't labeling him certifiable yet, but they do want the 26-year-old to keep his priorities straight.
"[Interscope CEO] Jimmy Iovine will tell me, 'I hope you're smart like Dre,' " said 50, who admits he now has to have meetings with executives at Interscope because of his run-ins with the law. "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."
As committed as 50 is to Shady/Aftermath, he has a greater allegiance to the streets and the mixtape circuit. Working from the ground up is what made him. Last year, he created huge buzz for himself by incessantly releasing new songs, freestyles and his own versions of other artists' cuts via his own G-Unit CDs and DJs' mixtapes.
"Right now, maybe not all over the world but in New York, [50 Cent] has the streets on fire," Jay-Z said last year when asked whose music he was feeling.
But 50's music didn't just stay regional. It spread like a virus, and pretty soon cuts that were heavily rotated on the underground, like "Wanksta" and his duet with the Notorious B.I.G., "The Realest," made their way onto radio across the country. One of his tapes eventually landed in the hands of Eminem, leading to 50's storied big-money deal with Shady/Aftermath. The Queens MC took home $500,000 and as a gift from Em and Dre, was given a watch worth the same amount of money.
If you ask the iconic beat technician, he'll tell you he has no regrets about his investment.
"50 came out here to L.A. for a couple of days and he seemed like he was cool as sh--," remembered Dre, who cranked out seven songs in five days with the MC. "50 is one of the most incredible artists I worked with as far as writing, basic performance and vibing. He came in, and every track I put up, he had something for it. He wrote to it. He got in the booth and did his thing. 50's album in my opinion is gonna compete with all the classic hip-hop LPs that came out in the last 10 years. It's right up there. Sh-- came out hot."
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