Hook Up Your Cell with 50 Cent

Hip-Hop’s Heavyweight

50 Cent, Fifty Cent, or just Fiddy—the rapper turned entertainer is hip-hop’s current wunderkind. If guns and money do in fact separate the hip-hop haves from the have nots, then it’s by 50 Cent’s example. Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson is the headline talent in the recent movie, Get Rich or Die Tryin’. The flick’s title is a fitting one for his life to date. 50 has quickly fashioned himself into one of East Coast rap’s most charismatic pistol-worshipping artists. Rappers en masse dream of making the mainstream music crossover, but few are able. Like any successful rapper, 50 started off a street thug in Jamaica, New York; the raunchier part of Queens, an image that can only be aggrandized for the betterment of his career. Long before music, 50 could have given up or gotten lost in the bigger shuffle of the rap-gangsta world. His tough Queens history is certainly punctuated with the kind of hard times you only see in the movies.

Gunshot Wounds Earn Street Cred

Over the last half-dozen years 50 Cent has navigated the hardscrabble of the underground hardcore rap scene like a veteran marketing maven. In May 2000 Columbia was just slated to release 50’s album, Power of the Dollar when the rapper was nearly killed in a classic rap-gangsta shooting. 50 earned nine gunshot wounds that shot his street cred through the roof. The event was instigated, reports have said, by a bad mix of drugs, money and envy, but it was simply too much of the hardcore hip-hop underworld for Columbia to swallow and their relationship was severed. Ironically, the event effectively made 50 the poster-boy for thug rap.

50 Works the Mixtape Culture

Screw Columbia, 50 wrote and recorded sans budget and backing. He launched a barrage of bootleg mixtapes into the hip-hop underworld, a finely honed, if not perfect, counter-culture viral marketing scheme. If Columbia was naive to the culture, 50 knew this strategy could make him or break him as an artist and icon. The move garnered him a powerful fan-base, and a hip-hop posse with a now very marketable name: G-Unit.

In 2002, 50 sat on the brink of commercial success. Eminem won a bid for 50’s loyalty and business and signed him with Shady/Aftermath, a collaborative label between Eminem and Dr. Dre. And in early 2003 his album Get Rich or Die Trying was released. The album went platinum in its first week of commercial release.

The success of Get Rich made it possible for 50 to start his own record label, G-Unit Records. The release of Beg for Mercy proved a fruitful partnership between 50 and G-Unit. Businessman, and music marketing mogul, 50 now divides his time among a number of enterprises: music, movies and now his G-Unit Books label.

Power of the Dollar:

1. Intro
2. The Hit
3. The Good Die Young
4. Corner Bodega
5. Your Life’s on the Line
6. That Ain’t Gangsta
7. As the World Turns (Feat. U.G.K.)
8. Ghetto Qu’ran (Forgive Me)
9. Da Repercussions
10. Money by Any Means (Feat. Noreaga)
11. Material Girl 2000
12. Thug Love (Feat. Destiny’s Child)
13. Slow Doe
14. Gun Runner Skit
15. You Ain’t No Gangsta
16. Power of the Dollar
17. I’m a Hustler
18. How To Rob (Feat. The Madd Rapper)

Guess Who’s Back?:

1. Killa Tape Intro
2. Rotten Apple
3. Skit/Drop
4. That’s What’s Up (featuring Tony Yayo and Lloyd Banks)
5. U Not Like Me
6. 50 Bars
7. Life’s on the Line
8. Get out the Club
9. Be a Gentleman
10. Fuck You (produced by DJ Clark Kent)
11. Too Hot (featuring Nas & Nature)
12. Who U Rep With (featuring Nas & The Bravehearts)
13. Corner Bodega
14. Ghetto Qu'ran
15. As the World Turns (featuring U.G.K.)
16. Whoo Kid Freestyle
17. Stretch Armstrong Freestyle
18. Doo Wop Freestyle

50 Cent is the Future:

1. U Should Be Here
2. Bump Dat Street Mix
3. The Banks Workout
4. Whoo Kid Kayslay Shit!
5. 50 Cent Just Fucking Around
6. G Unit Soldiers
7. Got Me A Bottle
8. Tony Yayo Explosion
9. Clue/50
10. A Lil Bit Of Everything U.T.P.
11. Cut Master C Shit
12. Call Me
13. 50/Banks
14. Surrounded by Hoes
15. G Unit That’s What’s Up!
16. Bad News

No Mercy, No Fear:

1. MTV Intro
2. Green Lantern
3. Elementary
4. Fat Bitch
5. Banks Victory
6. Back Seat/Tony Yayo
7. After My Chedda
8. Soldier
9. E.M.S.
10. G-Unit
11. Say What You Want
12. Clue Shit!
13. Funk Flex
14. Whoo Kid
15. Scarlet Skit
16. PT2 & Bump Heads
17. Keepin It Hood
18. Wanksta
19. Star & Buc Outro

Get Rich or Die Tryin’:

1. Intro
2. What Up Gangsta
3. Patiently Waiting - Featuring Eminem
4. Many Men [Wish Death]
5. In Da Club
6. High All The Time
7. Heat
8. If I Can’t
9. Blood Hound- Featuring Young Buck of G Unit
10. Back Down
11. P.I.M.P.
12. Like My Style- Featuring Tony Yayd of G Unit
13. Poor Lil Rich
14. 21 Questions- Featuring Nate Dogg
15. Don’t Push Me - Featuring Lloyd Banks of G Unit & Eminem
16. Gotta Make It To Heaven

The Massacre:

1. Intro
2. In My Hood
3. This Is 50
4. I’m Supposed To Die Tonight
5. Piggy Bank
6. Gatman And Robbin
7. Candy Shop
8. Outta Control (Remix)
9. Get In My Car
10. Ski Mask Way
11. A Baltimore Love Thing
12. Ryder Music
13. Disco Inferno
14. Just A Lil Bit
15. Gunz Come Out
16. My Toy Soldier
17. Position Of Power
18. Build You Up
19. God Gave Me Style
20. So Amazing
21. I Don’t Need ‘Em
22. Hate It or Love It (G-Unit Remix)