50 Cent recently opened up about what was running through his mind after being shot nine times—a life-altering moment that completely shifted his path.
Speaking with Fox News, the hip-hop icon revisited the 2000 shooting, detailing the aftermath and how it changed his perspective. When asked if he worried about getting back to music, 50 admitted his career wasn’t the first thing on his mind.
“I wasn’t thinking about a CD,” he said with a laugh. “As soon as you feel fine, the doctors are telling you you’re fine, you’re going to recover and you look and you go, ‘Whoa, what am I going to do?’ The record company is not answering the phone anymore, everything is changing, and then it’s like you got to figure out how to do it on your own.”
Since streaming didn’t exist back then, 50 had to get creative about spreading his music.
“We were in a different climate, so I couldn’t do anything that the new artists can do. They go record and upload music to YouTube and Apple iTunes,” he explained. “I had to trick bootleggers into thinking to steal it so they could reproduce it and distribute it for me, ’cause there were no other outlets to get it out.”
Earlier in the conversation, 50 Cent reflected on how the shooting forced him to scrap his original debut, Power of a Dollar. The near-death experience reshaped his vision and ultimately set the stage for his game-changing 2003 album, Get Rich or Die Tryin’.
In May 2000, 50 was ambushed outside his grandmother’s home in Queens, taking nine bullets to his hand, arm, hip, legs, chest, and face. One shot pierced his jaw, leaving him with the signature slur in his voice that fans instantly recognize today.
Though the attack temporarily pushed him out of the industry, it became the defining moment that fueled his hunger and launched his unstoppable rise.
