The 50th Law

The 50th Law

On the morning of May 24, 2000, Curtis Jackson walked out of his grandmother's house on Elmhurst Avenue in South Jamaica, Queens, and got into a car. He was twenty-four years old, unsigned, and about to release his first major-label album for Columbia Records. Before the car left the block, a man approached the driver's window and opened fire. Nine bullets from a 9mm handgun. One through his hand. One through his arm. One through his hip. Two through his legs. One through his chest. One through his left cheek, which shattered a wisdom tooth, swelled his tongue, and gave him the slightly slurred cadence that would become one of the most recognizable voices in music. Jackson spent thirteen days in the hospital. Columbia, spooked by the violence surrounding him, dropped him from the label. The album was shelved. His deal was gone. By any conventional logic, the story was over.

He went back to the street corner.

Not because he had no options. Because the corner had taught him something that the record label had started to undo. On the corner, there was no safety net, no contract, no advance payment. The only thing that kept you alive -- literally alive -- was your ability to see reality without flinching, to move faster than circumstances, and to be afraid of nothing. The shooting had not broken Curtis Jackson. It had clarified him. The bullet that grazed his cheek and chipped his tooth had removed the last piece of illusion. He emerged from the hospital with a name -- 50 Cent, borrowed from a Brooklyn robber known for "changing the value of things" -- and a philosophy that would carry him from the corner of Southside Jamaica to a $100 million Vitamin Water exit, a debut album that sold 872,000 copies in its first week, and a collaboration with one of the most influential writers of the twenty-first century.