Looking ahead to 50 Cent at Longitude: "Impressive though his business dealings may be, his most valuable currency remains his skills on the mic"

He’s dreamed big and lived large, but Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson is not ready to cash in his chips just yet. Twenty years (and a bit) on from his breakout album, Get Rich Or Die Tryin’, the rapper has parlayed his success in the recording booth into an extraordinary second act as hip-hop’s ultimate renaissance man.

He’s still ripping it up as a rapper – as the now 49-year-old will make clear to Irish fans with his headline turn at the Longitude Festival at Marlay Park Dublin on Sunday, July 6. However, that’s merely the start of his talents. Bestselling author, award-winning TV producer, curator of a hilarious Instagram feed –  he’s done it all.

It is an astonishing story, especially when you consider Jackson declared bankruptcy as recently as 2015, having already survived a drive-by shooting early in his hip-hop career, which left him with permanent scarring and forever changed his rapping style (his voice became significantly deeper post-shooting).

How has he done it? One reason for his longevity is that he understands that life as a rapper isn’t about smash after smash. Jackson has clocked up album sales of over 30 million and has a string of hit singles, including the Billboard-topping ‘In Da Club’.

However, he also appreciates artists aren’t going to be a hot new face forever, and that it’s important to try different things. To remain open to new experiences and diverse collaborations. He knows, too, that rappers have it particularly tough in that their audience wants to feel invested in their story – the darker, the better. You can give them some of what they want - but not too much. Because otherwise, what’s left for yourself?

“In hip-hop, people are looking for the damage,” Jackson said in 2020. “And you come in and they look at you, and they can see the damage. They can see the experience, the story, why you are where you are. You can offer something unique. It works for a while, but then as you continue to be successful, you don’t have that same damage.”

In Jackson’s case, there is a lot of damage to go around. Born in Queens, New York, he was eight when his drug dealer mother, Sabrina, died in a fire, leaving him to be raised by his grandparents.

They did their best to keep him out of trouble – he began boxing at the age of 11 and showed considerable promise. Yet trouble found him all the same: by age 14, he was dealing crack, and at age 19, was convicted of drug possession and sent to a boot camp for young offenders.

Incarceration was a short, sharp shock: it forced him to reflect on his life and the mistakes he had made. He vowed to turn it all around – a transformation he enshrined by taking on the alter-ego 50 Cent. Freed after six months, he embarked on a new career – superstar rapper. His early mixtapes became a sensation around Queens, earning a deal with Columbia Records.

Disaster struck all over again when he was shot nine times in a drive-by shooting – the motives for which are murky to this day. What isn’t murky is that he sustained serious injuries – to the face, body and legs. In the grimmest possible sense, here was the “damage” he would later talk about: the attack was woven into his mythology, and while he never tried to glamourise what happened, it is regarded as integral to who he is as a performer.

Along with his mother’s death and prison, it became the third defining moment of his life – 50 Cent forged in that hail of bullets.

“It doesn’t hurt as much as people imagine it hurts - because of the adrenaline. But it hurts after,” he told Oprah Winfrey in 2012. “Going through that experience, when you get hurt that bad, either your fear consumes you, or you become a bit insensitive. There was a point where I was afraid... and then in the recovery process, I got tired of being afraid. The only way to cover those emotions was to be a bit more aggressive. And to be angry about the situation opposed to how I was actually feeling at that point.”

He’s beefed with the best of them – waging feuds with rivals such as The Game and Ja Rule. Jackson also had a testy relationship with the now-disgraced Diddy. They collaborated early in both their careers: Jackson wrote Diddy’s hit ‘Let’s Get It’ in 2001. However, they were never friends. Jackson has talked about how he stayed clear of Diddy’s notorious parties, always getting bad vibes.

“I’ve been very vocal about not going to Diddy parties and doing shit like that,” Jackson could later say. “I’ve been staying out of that shit for years. It’s just an uncomfortable energy connected to it.”

Along with the beef, he has cultivated solid relationships. For instance, when Eminem was invited to perform at the 2022 Super Bowl halftime show as part of a hip-hop ensemble, he requested permission to bring a friend.

“Eminem wouldn’t do it without me,” explained Jackson. “That’s how I ended up on the show because he was not coming if I didn’t do it. When that happens, you go, ‘Damn, so you lost Eminem because you didn’t bring 50? Damn. All right. Bring 50, then.’ But if it were up to them, they would not have me there. I’m the surprise. I’m not on the bill at all. But they couldn’t get Em to do it without me.”

Away from music, Jackson has a thriving parallel career as TV mogul via his G-Unit Production company. Successes include the Emmy-nominated Power, a hit drama about a father desperate to escape his life of crime.

Yet for all these achievements – and his many ups and downs – it’s for his take-no-prisoners rap that he is still adored. That is what will bring the crowds to Marlay Park, where 50 Cent will remind the audience that, impressive though his business dealings may be, his most valuable currency remains his skills on the mic.

Read the full Longitude Special in the current issue of Hot Press, out now: