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On April 24th, 2000, Jackson was attacked by a gunman, alleged to be Darryl “Home” Baum, outside his
grandmother’s former home in Queens. He went to a friend’s car, but was asked to return to the house to get
his jewelry. Upon returning to the car, another car pulled up nearby. An assailant then walked up to Jackson’s
left side with a 9mm handgun and fired nine shots at close range. None of the bullets missed. He was shot in the hand, face, arm, hip, both legs and chest. The face shot only resulted in A swollen tongue, lost of A wisdom tooth, and A slight slur in his speech. He spent thirteen days in the hospital. Jackson’s friend was also shot once in the hand. After his release from the hospital, Baum was found mysteriously murder three weeks later. Baum was also one of Mike Tyson’s former body guards.
Jackson recalled the incident saying, “ It happened so fast that you don’t even get A chance to shoot back….I
was scared the whole time. I was looking in the rearview mirror on the way to the hospital like, “Oh shit,
somebody shot me in the fucking face!” In his autobiography, From Pieces to weight: Once Upon A Time In Southside
Queens, Jackson wrote, “After I got shot nine times at close range and didn’t die, I started to think I must have
a purpose in this life…How much more damage would that shell have done? Give me an inch in this direction, or an
inch in that direction, and I wouldn’t be here writing this today, I would be six feet under.” After the shooting,
he used A walker for six weeks and fully recovered after five months. When he left the hospital, he stayed in
Pocono’s with his then girlfriend and son. Where he then begin A workout regiment which helped him attain the
muscular physique he still has to this very day.
While in the hospital, Jackson signed A publishing deal with Columbia records. However, he was dropped from
the label and “blacklisted” in the recording industry because of his song “Ghetto Qu’ran”. unable to find A
studio to work with in the U.S, he traveled to Canada. Along with his business partner Sha Money XL, he
recorded over thirty songs for mixtapes, with the purpose of building A reputation. Jackson used the mixtape
circuit to his own advantage saying, “He took all the hottest beats from every artist and flipped them with
better hooks”. They then got into all the markets on the mixtapes and all the mixtape DJ’s were messing with
them. Jackson’s popularity rose and in 2002, he released material independently on the mixtape,
“Guess who’s back?”. Beginning to attract interest and now backed by G-Unit. In 2002, Eminem listened to
A copy of Jackson’s “Guess Who’s Back?” CD. He received the cd through Jackson’s attorney, who was
working with Eminem’s manager Paul Rosenberg. Impressed with the album, Eminem invited Jackson to
Los Angeles, where he was introduced to the well known Dr. Dre. After signing A
one million dollar record deal, Jackson released the mixtape “No Mercy, No Fear”, It featured the track
“Wanksta” which was put on Eminem’s 8 Mile soundtrack.
In 2003 Jackson released his album “Get Rich or Die Trying” Allmusic Company described it as “probably
the mist hyped debut album by a rap artist in about A decade”. Rolling Stone noted the album for its
“dark synth grooves, buzzy keyboards and a persistently funky bounce”, with Jackson complementing the
production in “an unflappable, laid-back flow. It debuted at number one on the Billboard top 200,
selling 872,000 copies in its first four days. The lead single, “In Da Club” broke A billboard record
as the most listened-to song in radio history within A week. His second CD, The Massacre, sold
1.14 million copies in the first four days, making it the highest in abbreviated sales cycle, and
peaked and number one on the Billboard Top 200 for six straight weeks. With hits like Candy Shop,
Disco Inferno, and How We Do, 50 Cent just couldn’t be stopped. In September 2007, he released his
3rd album, “Curtis” which debuted number one on the Billboard Top 200 for only two weeks.
To this very day, Curtis Jackson has various companies he owns. He owns clothing lines, his own line of
colognes, and countless other companies. I don’t think we have seen the last of 50 Cent. While people
still love this music to this very day, his story is like a fairy tale, from being a drug dealer with
no parents to having A fourteen year old son an being A very successful artist and businessman.
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