A green light from Starz, then a repeats-heavy channel that sat below HBO and Showtime in the prestige cable tier, didn’t exactly set up the series for an extended run. But it wasn’t until he connected with The Good Wife writer Courtney A Kemp that the idea evolved into a pitch about a Michael Corleone type caught between two worlds. Still, Jackson couldn’t shake the urge to develop a small-screen project that might serve as a vehicle for music too taboo for Apple Music and the like. The harder they come … Curtis Jackson as dangerous inmate Cassius Dawkins in For Life. (It’s not as though Jackson, for all his action star ambitions, was known for having a softer side like Will Smith or LL Cool J.) Black crime dramas seemed better suited to the big screen, where “hood films” such as New Jack City (starring Wesley Snipes and Ice-T) and Belly (with Nas and DMX) achieved rarefied cult status. Television looked like the last place he would end up the medium seems almost too tame for him.
He dabbled in film-making, mostly producing work that either featured him in the cast or was explicitly about him. He made a fortune after being an early investor in Vitaminwater but in 2015 declared bankruptcy. He published a book with The 48 Laws of Power author Robert Greene called The 50th Law. That seemed to hasten Jackson’s next pivot from gangsta rapper to business mogul.
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And he nearly did until he picked a sales fight with a college dropout with a backpack full of beats named Kanye, someone with his own creation myth – a car accident that broke his jaw. It seemed as if he might dominate radio for a decade. Sign up to our Inside Saturday newsletter for an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the making of the magazine’s biggest features, as well as a curated list of our weekly highlights.Īfter that came 14 Grammy nominations and a 2010 win, a bespoke label, G-Unit, and more commercial prosperity. In 2003, 50 Cent made his commercial debut with Get Rich or Die Tryin’ the lead single, In Da Club, smashed the Billboard record for the most listened-to radio song within a week. The immensely popular giveaways caught the attention of Eminem, who introduced him to Dr Dre, who quickly signed him to his imprint, Interscope. Undeterred, Jackson, a prolific writer and producer, gave his tracks away, inaugurating the era of the record industry-disrupting mixtape. Columbia dropped him, and other labels backed away, not wanting to entangle themselves with an artist whose lyrics rang so true. His immediate career prospects dipped after the shooting.
Amazingly, Jackson walked out of hospital two weeks later, with a true sense of purpose and a mind set on packing muscle on to his 6ft frame – a physical transformation that laid a foundation for a machiavellian persona. But just as his debut album was due to be released, Jackson was attacked outside his grandmother’s home and shot nine times at close range, the injuries to his face resulting in a swollen tongue and a slurred voice.
The 46-year-old Queens, New York native appeared poised to pull off a familiar progression from drug dealer to gangsta rapper after signing with Columbia Records in 2000. I f such a thing as a Lazarus-like figure exists in hip-hop, it’s Curtis James Jackson III – better known as 50 Cent.
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