50 Cent has always had a key aspect of the hip-hop game down: confidence. You'd be hard pressed to find many dudes in rap who exude the badassery that 50 does. This week, the Queens rapper took that bravado to a new level when he put himself in a class with fallen legends Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G.
Asked by The Guardian if dying would've made him a bigger star, 50 took the conversation to a new level.
"You know what, I don't think they'll replace me now," he said. "Already my face is in the hearts of people who really love hip-hop music, and the culture's growing to the point where you have people from all walks of life choosing it for their personal pleasure. So it's already there. I don't think it's going to take me being killed to compare me to Biggie or 2Pac. I am immortal."
50 (real name: Curtis Jackson) hit it big in 2003 as Eminem's protégé, selling more than eight million copies of his debut album Get Rich or Die Tryin'.
He had previously said his most recent album, Animal Ambition, would get him back to that high.
"I feel reignited," he said. "Like the energy's been rebooted into me as an artist. I been recording in the middle of the night — there ain't enough hours in the day. I slept for two and a half hours yesterday."
He's got an official record on tap — Street King Immortal — but he also announced he's making a quick follow-up to that, currently titled Beautiful Nightmare.
"Oh yeah," Jackson said. "That's the title of one of my next albums. Street King Immortal is the new one to come out, but the one after that might be Beautiful Nightmare. I've got thousands of titles."
He rebooted G-Unit this year, and they've been prolific in a short period of time. He also had a social media-driven spat with boxer Floyd Mayweather, and still deals with the pains of stardom on a regular basis.
"People around you develop a sense of entitlement and feel like you're supposed to make their career work," 50 said. "They're like, 'I've got this really good idea about how you can make me rich.' And I'll be looking at them like, 'Are you serious?' And they are serious."
We can only imagine. Check out the latest single from G-Unit, "Big Body Benz."
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