50 Cent relived the harrowing 2000 shooting that nearly ended his life and reshaped his future during a revealing sit-down on Fox & Friends, tying the life-altering moment to the creation of his multi-platinum debut album Get Rich or Die Tryin’.
The Queens-born rapper was just 25 when he was shot nine times outside his grandmother’s home in South Jamaica.
The ambush left him with bullet wounds in his legs, hands and face, and forced him into months of recovery. The violent attack also cost him his record deal.
“It shifted my concept,” 50 Cent said on the morning show on Tuesday. “My first album concept was Power of a Dolla_r, and then I went to _Get Rich or Die Tryin’, the stakes just got higher.”
After the shooting, Fif found himself abandoned by the industry and forced to rebuild from scratch.
“You look, and you go, well, what am I going to do?” he said. “The record company’s not answering the phone anymore. Everything’s changing. And then it’s like, you got to figure out how to do it on your own.”
That adversity became the fuel behind Get Rich or Die Tryin’, released in 2003. The album’s standout track, “Many Men (Wish Death on Me),” directly references the shooting and became an anthem of survival and defiance.
50 Cent’s resilience didn’t begin with that attack. He lost his mother in a fire when he was just eight years old, a tragedy that left him to navigate a rough upbringing in one of New York’s toughest neighborhoods. His early years were marked by street life and drug dealing before he pivoted to music.
Now, 50 Cent has expanded far beyond rap. He’s the host of “50 Ways to Catch a Killer” with 50 Cent, a true-crime series streaming on Fox Nation_,_ where he delves into unsolved cases alongside a team of investigators.
“I had a team of people help me curate it, and what I do is try to solve things before they solve it on television,” he said.
The rapper-turned-mogul also offered motivation for anyone facing setbacks.
“There are no excuses. There’s no situation that they’ll go through, or that they can’t go through, and still be successful,” he said.
50 teased more projects ahead, including a possible second season of his show and a role in a new Street Fighter film. But he’s not trying to reinvent himself.
“I don’t want to be someone new,” he said. “I just want to be a better version of who I am.”
The shooting, widely believed to be linked to his past street dealings, happened as 50 Cent was trying to leave that life behind and focus on music. That brush with death became the defining moment of his transformation.
The final two episodes of 50 Ways to Catch a Killer with 50 Cent are available now on Fox Nation.
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