50 Cent was famously shot nine times in Queens, New York, in 2000. The G-Unit rapper has reflected on how the incident changed his career in a new interview.
The ‘In Da Club’ artist dropped his debut project, Power of a Dollar, in September 2000. It was released as an EP after Columbia Records dropped him following his near-fatal shooting.
50 was shot in the hand, arm, hip, legs, chest, and face outside his grandmother’s house. He was lucky enough to survive and be inspired by the incident.
Speaking to Fox News, he said, “It shifted my concept. My first album concept was Power of a Dollar, and then I went to Get Rich or Die Tryin’, the stakes just got higher. I like them to look at me and say, ‘There’s no excuses.’ There’s no excuses, there’s no situation that they can’t go through and still be successful.”
He added, “It’s just in me. I want to do things, I want to be successful. Some people don’t want to. They’ll just grab a tent and sit on the side of the street and not deal with any of the pressures of what you would deal with coming to work.”
Fiddy explained how his mindset flipped, which led to signing to Eminem’s Shady Records and Dr Dre’s Aftermath Entertainment.
“As soon as you’re fine, the doctor’s telling you you’re going to recover, 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.”
50 previously addressed the shooting in his autobiography, From Pieces to Weight: Once Upon a Time in Southside Queens, in 2005.
“After I got shot nine times at close range and didn’t die, I started to think that I must have a purpose in life,” he wrote. “How much more damage could that shell have done? Give me an inch in this direction or that one, and I’m gone.”
