This year, 50 Cent’s been touring the globe on his Final Lap Tour, celebrating the 20th anniversary of his debut album Get Rich Or Die Tryin, which, to this day, is considered a hip-hop classic. The Dr Dre-produced project went straight to number one and was a genre-defining body of work.
As such, this year, the Queens emcee (real name Curtis Jackson) has been speaking heavily on the album and recently opened up to Rebecca Judd on her Apple Music 1 radio show. When asked by the host what he was dreaming of following the release of the project, Jackson responded, “If you had asked me to make a wish in 2003, I would’ve just wished that my music was a hit. I didn’t see 20 years ahead in music like that. I’m just that at the moment for it to work.”
When asked if he ever thought he would be a one-hit wonder, the ‘In Da Club’ musician asserted “no” because he had worked under Jam Master Jay for many years before his mainstream breakout and knew the formula to make hits.
Explaining why hip-hop does produce so many one-hit MCs, Jackson explained, “What’s crazy is most artists, they think they’re ready before they are. Most good artists, they’ve thought they were ready before they actually good at it, but they’ve had that window of time to work that allowed them to actually become good enough. That’s why we have one-hit wonders in hip-hop culture.”
He added, “Then because when that happens, they have that first hit, and then it takes them out of the studio to go perform and to go meet all the distractions to come with being a successful artist, and then they land back in the studio without being trained to know how to create the next song. So they be stuck with that one hit.”
Earlier this year ‘In Da Club’ earned a diamond certification from the RIAA for selling over 10million units, and it’s undoubtedly one of Jackson’s favourite songs and the bedrock of his career. However, there is one track featured on Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ that he is not too fond of.
Revealing his least favourite song from the album, Jackson disclosed, “‘Many Men’ was my least favourite at that point because, musically we was in the boom-bap phase. We was in that hard-hitting intensity, the energy on the records, and it’s the slowest song on Get Rich or Die Tryin’. And it’s now the tempo that the artists are rapping to. So the fast tempo, hard-hitting beats, that was that era, that time period. And the whole album had it.”
You can listen to ‘Many Men (wish Death)’ below.
