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 neighborhood of South Jamaica, Queens, the May 2000 shooting that nearly took his life was brazen.
At 11:22 a.m., 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?’ ”
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 behavior. 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.
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 50’s 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.”
