There are a few constants in the 50 Cent origin story: He’s the guy who raps one of the most recognizable opening hooks ever. He got shot nine times and lived to tell about it. For a time, he had every adolescent boy in America doing the G-Unit call-out, and he made a ton of money by investing in Vitaminwater (only to declare bankruptcy by 2015).
It’s a wildly incomplete account of the rapper’s life and career. 50 Cent, also known as Curtis Jackson, was everywhere in the last year, if you knew where to look. On television, season three of Power Book II: Ghost — one of three spinoffs of Power, a series that has established the rapper as a sought-after television producer with a small empire of shows either in production or development — broke viewership records for Starz’s streaming platform. His Final Lap Tour, a celebration of the 20th anniversary of his megahit debut album Get Rich or Die Tryin’, took him to 28 countries and sold more than a million tickets. He performed a guest verse on a single from Nas’s new record and did another verse for Nicki Minaj on Pink Friday 2 (Gag City Deluxe), which dropped at the end of the year.
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