It's a frosted Sunday night in downtown Detroit. Further along the block from a musical production of Sesame Street Live sits a 3,000 seater called the State Theatre. Here, hordes of chain-smoking trailer-park thugs, junior pimps, name-brand-sporting Arab princes-and the tube-top-wrapped young ladies who love them-bounce along with Motor City rude boys like D12 and Obie Trice. The main attraction this evening, however, is 26-year-old South Jamaica, Queens, N.Y., native Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson. Everyone is either bouncing in their seats or dancing on the ceiling; if adrenaline was nuclear, the State Theatre on the night of 50 Cent's record-release party would be the illest microwave. n Come showtime, a bulletproof-vest-donning Christopher Lloyd, aka Lloyd Banks, and five other G-Unit soldiers (50's pistol-packing posse) step out from behind the curtains while rapping atop an instrumental version of Black Rob's symphonic "Whoa!" Black Beatlemania happens seconds later when Jackson struts out wearing a platinum pendant nearly the size of a Frisbee, strips down to a tank top, and rolls right into "U Not Like Me"-a tune off his mainstream debut LP, Get Rich or Die Tryin'. "U Not Like Me" is basically Jackson's thug-life manifesto. "If you get shot and run to the cops, you not like me," he raps, as white girls from Taylor, Mich., swoon, and young men, looking fresh off their high school lacrosse-team fields, with their Tigers baseball caps turned backward, pump their fists.
When Eminem-the man who, along with Andre "Dr. Dre" Young, helped fuel 50's rise to prominence (the duo signed Jackson to their Shady/Aftermath label for a reported $1 million)-takes the stage to join 50, the salt-and-pepper MCs look like twins as they go verse for verse, sporting tank tops and do-rags. Then 50 launches into "In da Club"-the ever popular "it's your birthday" song. The balcony buckles as if it's on the verge of giving in. It's at this very moment that Eminem's mug shines a look that seems both spooked and relieved. Spooked because, damn, this frenzied madness is actually happening again, and relieved because, well, damn, this time all eyes will be on Curtis Jackson.
Anyone reading this fully understands that the State gig isn't some odd Bigfoot-esque sighting, some isolated phenomenon; Jackson's foolproof Get Rich or Die Tryin' scheme helped him sell 400,000 records on day one of its release, and nearly 3 million units in less than a month. ("This record is saying that it's acceptable for an artist to be exactly what the fuck he wants to be," Jackson would later say about his record-breaking stats.) Rock 'n' roll stations have been spinning his first single, "In da Club," and the accompanying video can be seen flickering on Viacom's MTV and MTV2 networks almost 24-7. The powers that be at MTV have drafted 50 into the Big 10 rotation program, which means that "In da Club" is one of the 10 videos chosen to get major burn for a hot minute.
"This guy has eclipsed anything that's happened in pop or rock on the channel in a couple of years-probably the last time we had an explosion like this was with Limp Bizkit," says Tom Calderone, executive VP of music and talent programming at MTV. "I think some of the kids that are buying the 50 album also have Linkin Park and Metallica and other rock stuff in their home libraries. There's no reason why he shouldn't share the stage with other big rock stars, because as much as people classify him as hip hop-which is really what he is-he's also a rock star, in that kind of über sense of the word. He just looks cool on camera."
For many of his new fans, Jackson is just that, a look inside the mind of an extreme gangster rapper who also serves as the eye-candy flavor of the month. But aside from being Eminem's rapper of choice, he's the hip hop Cinderfella.
Jackson would never in his wildest dreams have imagined Robin Williams live at the Grammys making light of him getting shot. But from 50's well-publicized beef with Ja Rule to the street following earned by the underground release Guess Who's Back? and numerous mix tapes and his overnight linking with Eminem, Jackson's story isn't the same old blues progression about the underdog. It's about the pup who was buried under his doghouse and somehow dug his way back up to the surface, only to defecate on his competition. Folks from all walks of life-grimy mix-tape apostles, MTV big wigs, and the star-struck all-American teens they serve-dig on stories like that.
Back in 1997, 50 Cent was a nobody East Coast rapper with a sales potential that reached maybe a few miles past Philadelphia. Among Sony Music's major artists-Mariah Carey, Bob Dylan, and the Fugees-50's project was a peanut-sized blip rotting somewhere in the thick of Tommy Mottola's black hole. Jackson was no supernova, or super Casanova for that matter. So after the rapping drug dealer got shot nine times, his record label was happy to give him his walking papers.
But some in the rap game stayed loyal. "For the first few months [after he was shot] nobody heard from him," says Michael "Sha Money XL" Clervoix, the Haitian-American, Queens-bred production ace who met the rapper while working as a member of Jam Master Jay's beat-crafting team in '97. "I would call his grandmother to ask how he was doing. Three months later, I get this call out of the blue, and I hear a voice say, 'They done put Humpty Dumpty back together, baby!' And I'm like, Get the fuck outta here! 50?"
Hip hop heads appreciate 50's struggle, understand his battles, relate to the slang. The happy little TRL-ers, most of whom know little to nothing of real-life crack deals or gun violence, know that Eminem thinks 50's "da bomb!" Oh, and that he's tough and has muscles, points he credits to his "hollow-tip diet."
"Before being shot, I was kinda fat," 50 says. "My eating habits were wrong. After I got shot, I was on liquids for six weeks. My stomach had shriveled up so small that, even when I was able to eat, I was eating so little. The attention [from the ladies] feels good though. Especially since this wasn't my intention."
But other insiders seem to have his formula figured out. "He survived nine shots-which appeared to make him invincible," explains MTV VJ Sway Calloway. "He was on every record known to mankind, and that made him very accessible. He spoke in a language that was common to most people in every 'hood; that made him likeable. And he hooked up with Dre and Eminem, which made him marketable. So all of these ingredients-not to mention the fact that the dude writes hooky records-make a rap star in this day and age."
So for the Grammy-slamming Robin Williams, 50's struggle may represent just another punch line, but to those who know his pain, his existence is proof of a nation within a nation that refuses to die.
Long before the arrival of the white man, the stretch of land now called Jamaica, Queens, was cherished by the proud Yamecah (Beaver) people. African-Americans would go on to flourish there, and by 1926, the black population had grown considerably, and most were home owners. Between 1920 and 1940, the stream of bustling shops on Jamaica Avenue fed the local economy handsomely. After the Second World War, however, Jamaica's money started to dry up. Jamaica Avenue's mostly Jewish store owners fled their cramped apartments for spacious Long Island homes; by the 1960s, family businesses would lose out to the new malls in the burbs. Thereafter, families from Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Jamaica would dig in. By 1980, the neighborhood was largely black and Latino. Soon after, the crack blizzard dropped hail-sized white balls of delirium.
Crack was responsible for the mass numbness that blanketed hip hop's new generation. This era gave birth to kids of crack fiends and crack dealers, and shorties who just got swept up in the crossfire. Since then, MCs from both coasts have been rapping about the '80s drug swing, and songs like Biggie's "Ten Crack Commandments" have become the blueprint for so many hopeful young street hustlers.
Born into these conditions, Jackson learned the rules early on. At age 12, he enlisted as a soldier in the Crack War. His mother was a casualty of that same war, and her passing made him numb. But you've got to confront the cold to survive the blizzard.
"The rap game is like hustling," says Jean Bernard, aka Tony Yayo, a member of 50's G-Unit set who is currently serving time on Rikers Island. "50 was one of the biggest drug dealers in my neighborhood, so I knew he was gonna be one of the biggest rappers in the industry."
Yayo, raised by Haitian parents in South Jamaica, Queens, also admits to peddling drugs in his 'hood. He'd been on the lam for months, recording and touring with 50, laying the groundwork for his rap career, knowing full well that his outstanding warrant for bail-hopping on a gun charge would eventually do him in. And when 50's car was searched outside of a Manhattan nightclub in the early morning of December 31, 2002, two loaded pistols, along with Mr. Yayo, were recovered.
"I was just at [Interscope chairman] Jimmy Iovine's eating steak. Now, I'm eating commissary food," he says from the other end of a collect call. After Rikers, Yayo is facing six months in a boot camp. "I know I can do it because 50 did it," he says of the program that shaved time off of Jackson's initial sentence of three to nine years on felony drug charges. As it did for 50, street life has made navigating the ruthlessness of the penal system a little easier for Yayo.
"In jail, you've gotta respect other men or get cut," he says bluntly. "Me? I don't want to be in PC [protective custody] with cops walking me to get something to eat or having to be around transsexuals. I'd rather be in population with the people that I relate to. Because the niggas here are the same niggas that buy 50's album."
Yayo tells no lie. Jail is where many MCs get their lyrical inspiration. Rap music is nothing without slanguage arts, and incarcerated folk are hands-down innovators when it comes to dope speak. Even their fashion-the sagging pants, the carrot-colored jumpsuits worn by chain gangs, the nontied-shoe-lace look popularized by Run-DMC (it's difficult for a convict to make a break for it if his pants are off his ass and his shoes are loose)-is reappropriated by hip hop culture and thrives. It's all about the remix. And if hip hop culture has a strong respect for prison life, then he who is on top of his thug living reigns supreme.
Part of 50 Cent's appeal has to do with his reality, his past, his otherwise unfortunate situations-his gangsta. "I can bump 50's music with my head high, because he lives by some of the same codes that dead prez lives by," says M-1 of dead prez, hip hop's politically charged crew. The group has even titled their latest album Revolutionary But Gangsta, a move sure to arouse the interests of today's thug-loving hip hop generation. "I heard him say a snitch should die. We believe that a snitch should end up in ditches, too. But where 50 Cent might be trying to get rich or die trying, we're trying to get free or die trying." Of course there's room for MCs like dead prez, who'd rather sing about the benefits of community development and vegetarianism, but right now, the dominant culture of hip hop respects gangsta more than anything else.
Timing also played a significant role in 50's rise. Time is hip hop's most precious commodity, as dances and catchphrases and articles of clothing are always subject to change. PRO-Keds-sporting MCs toasting atop disco records in the park (mid- to late-'70s) made way for Afrika Bambaataa's Mohawked electro beats ('81 to '83), which cleared the runway for Run-DMC's tough leather B-boy flavors ('83 to '88).
In the same way, Nas's and Jay-Z's "King of New York" battle burned out villages and left room for a rapper like 50 to rise from the ashes. At least that's what it seems like when you're watching the 50 Cent show. Who's king of New York? Who gives a damn? His battles are bigger than New York. Being able to walk again is enough of a victory for a guy who survived multiple gunshots. Eluding the cops and raising a son with the constant presence of the Grim Reaper is a fight one can't afford to lose.
He's Christopher Wallace and Tupac Shakur rolled into one, melded together inside that action-figure physique. He's got Big's New York grit and wit, Pac's charisma and Southern-fried flow by way of South Jamaica, and both of their war stories-the narratives that young African-American men share in Brooklyn, Oakland, Memphis, Gary, Ind., Queens, and other pockets of hopelessness that shoot holes in the American dream.
The self-contained corporation that is 50 Cent is holed up in a conference room at a South Beach hotel meeting with lawyers, music publishers, and estate planners. Outside, alert, hulking bodyguards stand at attention. When 50 finally emerges from the powwow that finalizes his label deal with Interscope and smoothes out the wrinkles in his $10 million life-insurance policy (his son, 6-year-old Marquise, is the beneficiary), the tireless MC isn't totally rapped out.
50 says he's leaving the streets alone, but the streets still have a hold on him. Millions of dollars, bulletproof cars, guns, and over-the-shoulder looking-this is the life of a successful rap-posse leader. "You're mad, so you start carrying guns because you don't want to get shot," he says while making his way back up to his suite, three security men surveying his pathway to the elevator. "You don't want to go back to the intensive care unit. Somebody says something smart, and you'd rather send them."
And the fans want more of the same. "Know that my luxuries came from these situations taking place," 50 says. "[The media] will make me out to be crazy. Maybe I am a little crazy, because these situations don't bother me. But what would I be doing if I cared? Crying? Somewhere with my head stuck in the Bible trying to figure a way out? This is what I'm supposed to do with my life. And if you believe that for real, what else can you do?"
At a time in America's history when planes crash into towers that collapse in plain view of the nation, and when reality TV shows like Survivor and Joe Millionaire take the place of real living, listeners of popular music expect their gangsta rappers to deliver a certain truth. Pop in a 50 Cent CD and you, too, can be gangsta for 70 minutes. As for 50, he continues to represent his reality. "Mainstream America can look at me and say, 'That's the mentality of a young man from the 'hood,'" says 50. "That's where I come from, and that's what I am. My experiences make me who I am today." And it doesn't get any realer than that.
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