The Game spearheaded a new generation of West Coast gangster rap in the mid-2000s. The Compton rapper is shown here at the world premiere of Straight Outta Compton at the Microsoft Theatre in Los Angeles on August 10, 2015.
IN 2002, THE UNITED STATES WAS STILL REELING FROM THE SEPTEMBER 11 TERRORIST ATTACKS THAT HAD CLAIMED NEARLY THREE THOUSAND VICTIMS IN NEW YORK; WASHINGTON, DC; AND PENNSYLVANIA.
In his State of the Union address in January, President George W. Bush labeled Iraq, Iran, and North Korea an “axis of evil” and said they were guilty of state-sponsored terrorism. In March, the United States invaded Afghanistan. By November, the United Nations Security Council issued a resolution calling for Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, to disarm or face serious consequences.
As the world was in its latest race to global war, gangster rap was also ramping up for its own explosion. While the West Coast was enjoying a gangster rap renaissance spearheaded by Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, the genre was about to get a boost from a New York artist who had been left for dead, literally and figuratively.
Queens, New York, rapper 50 Cent had impressed producers Poke and Tone (aka the Trackmasters) with his song “The Hit.” Poke and Tone had produced the Firm’s The Album with Dr. Dre and had already enjoyed success with Nas, Foxy Brown, and Will Smith. They were also executives at Columbia Records at the time.
2003
Key Rap Releases
1. 50 Cent’s Get Rich or Die Tryin’ album
2. OutKast’s Speaker-boxxx/The Love Below album
3. JAY-Z’s The Black Album album
US President
George W. Bush
Something Else
A United States and British-led coalition invaded Iraq.
The Trackmasters had signed 50 Cent, but as the scheduled release for his debut album approached, he failed to elicit much excitement via singles such as “Rowdy Rowdy” and “Thug Love” (the latter was a collaboration with Destiny’s Child). Things changed, though, when 50 Cent recorded the controversial song “How To Rob.” On the tongue-in-cheek track, which was produced by Poke and Tone, 50 Cent imagines himself robbing a bevy of entertainers, from P. Diddy and Bobby Brown to JAY-Z and Mike Tyson. Objecting to some of the lyrics, Poke and Tone had 50 Cent remove some of the rougher lines about Mariah Carey and others.
50 Cent went along with their suggestions, but truth be told, he wasn’t concerned about offending anyone.
Released in August 1999 and included on the In Too Deep soundtrack, 50 Cent’s “How To Rob” became a sensation, for better or worse. “It was an immediate shock at radio because when they played it on [influential New York radio station] Hot 97, it was over,” Poke said. “Everybody was talking about this record. It immediately got him noticed, and that’s what we were looking for, attention.”
But with the attention came heat. Several of the rappers 50 Cent rhymed about took offense to his lyrics, including JAY-Z and Wu-Tang Clan member Ghostface Killah. Then, on May 24, 2000, 50 Cent was shot multiple times in front of his grandmother’s house in South Jamaica, Queens, New York. The reported shooter, Darryl “Hommo” Baum, was killed three weeks later.
The scrutiny brought on by his being shot and by the street tension generated by his song “Ghetto Qu’ran,” in which he gave detailed information about the names and operations of specific Queens, New York, drug dealers, proved unbearable for Columbia Records. 50 Cent was subsequently dropped from the label’s roster. The album he recorded for Columbia, Power of the Dollar, was not released, even though bootleg copies surfaced once he became a superstar. (However, it was later released as an EP.)
While he was recuperating, 50 Cent recorded songs for what would become the mixtapes that gave him a second chance in the music industry. He took the innovative step of using the instrumentals from existing songs from the Geto Boys, JAY-Z, Mobb Deep, and others. 50 Cent modified the hooks of the songs and then delivered his own versions. They were instantly recognizable because of the beats and choruses of the original songs, which were already proven crowd pleasers.
As a solo artist and with his G-Unit collective (initially composed of rappers 50 Cent, Lloyd Banks, and Tony Yayo), 50 Cent released a glut of material in 2002, including the independent album Guess Who’s Back? and mixtapes 50 Cent Is the Future and No Mercy, No Fear. 50 Cent’s hard-hitting, gritty, and charismatic material contained the standard gangster rap themes (guns, drugs, sex, violence) and made him one of the most buzzed-about artists in the genre, one who was booking club tours without a major record deal, an unheard-of accomplishment.
50 Cent was also relentless, releasing far more product than the typical artist. He was gaining attention and acclaim from the genre’s elite. No Mercy, No Fear featured the song “Wanksta,” which Eminem included on the soundtrack for 8 Mile, his semi-autobiographical blockbuster film.
In about two years, 50 Cent had gone from an afterthought to signing a one-million-dollar deal with Eminem’s Shady Records and Dr. Dre’s Aftermath Entertainment, becoming the first artist to sign a deal with both of them. Astute businessman that he was, he had already laid the groundwork for even greater success.
“One thing about 50, he knew how to brand himself before he got with Eminem and Dre,” Snoop Dogg said. “He was already popping and doing his own shit and making hot music and being controversial—doing all the shit that stars do. So, to me, 50 was already a star.”
50 Cent and his handlers played up his street past in the run-up to the release of his Shady/Aftermath debut album, 2003’s Get Rich Or Die Tryin’. His drug-dealing past and his being shot nine times gave him a hard-earned legitimacy from the perspective of rap listeners who clamored for artists who had risen up from what they considered an authentic street life.
DR. DRE AND EMINEM GANGSTER RAP
As rap evolved, getting the backing, or “cosign,” from a credible, established artist became almost an unwritten rule for and requirement to the road to success. Getting two industry titans to simultaneously back an artist was virtually unheard of. Things changed when Dr. Dre and Eminem took the rare step of partnering to release 50 Cent’s material, most notably 2003’s Get Rich Or Die Tryin’. The project was executive-produced by the two rap titans and put out via Dr. Dre’s Aftermath Entertainment and Eminem’s Shady Records in conjunction with Interscope Records. Less than a year after its release, Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ had sold more than six million units.
After establishing himself as a rap superstar, 50 Cent transitioned to Hollywood. Here are some of his more notable film and television projects.
Get Rich or Die Tryin’ (2005). In the film loosely based on his life story, 50 Cent portrays Marcus, an aspiring rapper who tries to leave the streets behind as he chases music stardom.
Righteous Kill (2008). 50 Cent appears in the film that reunited Robert De Niro and Al Pacino for the first time since 1995’s Heat.
Power (2014–18). Serving as an executive producer and star, 50 Cent helped usher in STARZ’s slate of original programming with this drama, which focuses on the double life of a New York nightclub owner and drug kingpin portrayed by Omari Hardwick.
“My nigga 50 was, ‘I’ll blast you. Nigga shot at me. We sold dope in Jamaica, Queens. The homie got one hundred years. We got the kilos, the AKs,’ but he was never looked at as the gangbanger,” MC Eiht said. “Never. Put him on the West Coast and tie him into one of these neighborhoods, he’d [have] been a muthafuckin’ gangster rapper.”
Although he wasn’t a gangbanger from the Los Angeles area, 50 Cent catered to the demographic. On Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ track “What Up Gangsta,” for instance, the hook references the Bloods and the Crips. “What up, Blood,” 50 Cent raps. “What up, cuz” comes next, using the word Crips consider a term of endearment among themselves.
Much of the rest of Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ played like a blueprint of classic gangster rap. “Many Men (Wish Death)” featured a reflective 50 Cent detailing people who wanted to see him perish, while “Heat” featured music built around gunshots. “P.I.M.P.” (and its remix featuring Snoop Dogg) played up 50 Cent’s ability to sleep with a woman and then have her prostitute herself for him.
Massively popular singles “In Da Club” and “21 Questions” showed that 50 Cent was able to remain himself while parlaying gangsterism into a commercially friendly format, something mentor Dr. Dre had perfected with his own work, as well as the music he made with Eazy-E, N.W.A, Snoop Dogg, and others.
With a significant self-generated buzz, a willingness to diss the most popular rappers of the moment (Ja Rule chief among them), and the stamp of approval from Eminem and Dr. Dre, as well as the crossover smash “In Da Club,” 50 Cent exploded onto the scene in 2003. Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ debuted as the No. 1 album in the country that February, showing that a new generation of gangster rappers could dominate the pop-culture consciousness.
50 Cent also came into the music industry with a distinctive focus: He was pushing his brands and was approaching his career as a multipronged business, not just as a rapper. It marked a significant evolution for both rap and gangster rap. In the eighties and nineties, for example, rappers had to walk a fine line between pursuing business opportunities and being labeled sellouts.
But by the time 50 Cent entered the conversation in 2003, Ice-T, Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and others had all made the transition from being looked at as exclusively hardcore rappers to being multifaceted entertainers, ones whose music, film, and endorsement work was accepted and appreciated by rap consumers, the general public, and business partners.
50 Cent used this evolution to his advantage, securing a deal with Shady/Aftermath’s parent company, Interscope Records, for his own G-Unit imprint. Given his history of churning out music, his newfound fame, and his keen business sense, 50 knew that with Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ selling more than five million copies in four months, he needed to strike again, and as quickly as possible.
In 2004, 50 Cent the executive continued his impressive run with G-Unit with the release of Lloyd Banks’s The Hunger for More and Young Buck’s Straight Outta Ca$hville. At this point, 50 Cent and his artists had sold more than ten million albums, and his endorsement deals with Reebok and Glacéau Vitamin-water were evidence that he was an eminently bankable persona.
“The last gangster rapper was 50 Cent,” Ice-T said. “He embodied that image, that ‘I don’t give a fuck.’ 50 Cent had you really believing you didn’t want to fuck with him. I heard 50 Cent, when he was beefing with Fat Joe, was like, ‘Fat Joe. I’m right down the street. It’s real hard to find a nigga when you know he got a gun, ain’t it?’ I was like, ‘Okay.’ I think 50 was the last one who did it that I believed. . . . And when I say 50 Cent, I also put Game in that, because Game was part of G-Unit.”
By the time 50 Cent joined Dr. Dre’s Aftermath Entertainment in 2002, the Game had already been signed to the company. Unfortunately, he hadn’t generated any momentum. The Game’s career began to change for the better thanks to 50 Cent. After working with Dr. Dre and being around the Game, 50 Cent believed that the lyric-driven gangster rapper from Compton had enormous potential.
Part of what made the Game distinctive was his ability to adopt, incorporate, and excel at any type of rhyme style, an extraordinary skill for a rapper. “The first thing when I listen to a beat, as soon as I hear it, I would say, ‘Ludacris would be on this,’” the Game said. “I take myself out of the equation, because I can put on any costume and become any type of MC with any style. I always figure out who can be on it first, and I attack that style. They don’t necessarily have to be on it with me, but that’s the way I go in to record it. The best part about that is that I get to use my city and my home and everything that I’m about to incorporate into that style.”
The Game’s chameleon-like rap abilities enabled him to thrive over Dr. Dre’s West Coast beats, instrumentals from New York artists, and the bouncy rhythms of Southern rap acts. In seizing an opportunity to build his brand, 50 Cent found someone who would become his most commercially successful protégé, an artist who otherwise may have gotten stuck in music industry purgatory. The Game had a record deal, but no insider at Aftermath Entertainment who believed in him enough to release his material.
“When [50 Cent] got put on, he had enough gangster to pull Game off the bench, because Game was sitting on the sidelines,” Snoop Dogg said. “He pulled him off the bench, put him in the game, play with him, give him a spotlight, help him shine, and create a platform that Game is still able to have to this day based off of 50 Cent looking on the sidelines and saying, ‘Hey, Dre, let me put this nigga in the game. This nigga ain’t getting in. He’s too good to be on the sideline. As a matter of fact, let me play with him real quick and show you something.’”
Adding the Game to G-Unit brought a new dimension to the crew. With the signing, 50 Cent now had rappers from three decidedly different rap constituencies: New York (Lloyd Banks, Tony Yayo, 50 Cent), the South (Young Buck), and the West Coast (the Game).
The lineage of the Game signing stretched back to eighties Compton rap and had come full circle at a time when there had been a lull in new Los Angeles–area gangster rap acts.
“There was a chain being built there where 50 went in and was like, ‘Okay, I need to bring someone out,’” Wrekonize said. “He created other artists to bring on his own, and it seemed like Game is that guy. It was a good time, because it seemed like it was so quiet on the West Coast in terms of artists at that time. It felt like the West was so ready for a champion, a new face. I feel like he came in almost like clockwork, at the right time for the West Coast.”
On his “Westside Story” single, the Game seemed aware of how Los Angeles rap was perceived.
Since the West Coast fell off, the streets been watchin’ / The West Coast never fell off, I was asleep in Compton / Aftermath been here, the beats been knockin’
The Game also rapped on “Westside Story” that he was “bringing CA back.” For Big Boy, radio host on Real 92.3 in Los Angeles, the lyrics carried significant weight.
“When we got the first Game records and the energy around them, and what the city felt like and what you started to hear out the cars, and he said, ‘I’m bringing CA back,’ it was like, ‘Hell yeah, you are,’” Big Boy said.
Furthermore, having 50 Cent perform the “Westside Story” chorus was also noteworthy given the lingering animosity between artists from the East and West Coasts. “Working with an artist like 50 from the other side of the country just helped to unify the movement,” said Wrekonize.
“I would have hoped that they took a cue from us, just the trouble we got into out representing that shit,” DJ Quik said of rappers promoting beef and gangsterism. “It was super, super dangerous, but at the same time, you’re worse off if you play like you’re not. It’s going to be harder that way, to fake it. He technically put the hood on his back. He put the whole Blood card on his back. But he’s such a good look, it almost made the gangbanging look secondary. You had to judge him on his talents, not how solid of a gangbanger and street brawler he is. It’s really about his fuckin’ music.”
Fans, though, gravitated to the Game’s gangster image, just as they had Ice-T, N.W.A, DJ Quik, Snoop Dogg, and others in the eighties and nineties. For the Bloods, in particular, who had not been as well represented in rap as the Crips, the Game was someone to rally around.
“He was a replica of what the millions of Bloods around the world aspired to be,” Snoop Dogg said. “He was their guiding light. He was what you thought a Blood was supposed to look like, rap like, act like, because he was stamped and solidified by real Crips like myself and the Crips on the West Coast that held the throne of the rap world from day one. To be solidified by real, official rappers and Crip members, and to have your own Blood stigma and to be a youngster and to be a leader and not a follower, definitely attracted people.
“That’s what it was about Game. He had leader qualities as a youngster to take the lead and not follow and do his own thing and say, ‘Yeah. This is Compton Piru Blood’ or whatever gang he claim, and let people know what it was that stayed down with it,” Snoop Dogg continued. “He stayed true to it and that’s official. One thing about us on the West, we respect when a nigga keep it one hundred. When a nigga just stay gangsta from top to bottom, that earns you more respect than anything—more respect than money and fame. I think that [was] his influence, that he was able to stand strong and tall and be him at all times and make other little homies get behind him, because everybody didn’t want to be a Crip. A lot of niggas wanted to be Bloods, and he gave them the greatest example on how to be one.”
50 Cent had beefs with many prominent celebrities. Here’s a look at several of them.
JAY-Z. 50 Cent named JAY-Z as someone he would accost on his 1999 song “How To Rob.” Later that year, JAY-Z responded on “It’s Hot (Some Like It Hot),” in which he rapped, “I’m about a dollar, what the fuck is 50 cents?” The two filmed a Reebok ad together in 2003 and performed together at Madison Square Garden in August 2007, though 50 Cent lobbed more disses JAY-Z’s way in 2009.
Ja Rule. 50 Cent’s rivalry with Ja Rule escalated into violence in 2000 when one of 50 Cent’s friends robbed Ja Rule of jewelry. The rappers crossed paths in a studio, and a brawl ensued. 50 Cent was stabbed in the chest. After recovering from being shot in April 2000, 50 Cent targeted Ja Rule and his Murder Inc. crew during his ascent to stardom.
Fat Joe. In 2004, Ja Rule recorded the song “New York” and featured Fat Joe and Jadakiss on the track. To 50 Cent, Fat Joe and Jadakiss were siding with his enemy, and thus became targets. 50 Cent dissed Fat Joe throughout his “Piggy Bank” song, which also features jabs at Shyne, Lil’ Kim, Kelis, and Nas. The two exchanged disses for nearly a decade.
Floyd Mayweather Jr. The former friends turned foes in April 2008. After 50 Cent put his hands in Mayweather’s face at a celebrity basketball event in Michigan, the boxer threw a punch. 50 Cent claimed victory after the altercation, which allegedly started over a bet.
Rick Ross. In May 2008, the house in which one of 50 Cent’s children was living with his mother burned down. Both the woman and 50 Cent’s son were in the residence at the time. Rick Ross referenced the incident in “Mafia Music,” a cut released in January 2009. The back-and-forth between the rappers continued for years, with 50 Cent referencing Rick Ross’s past as a correctional officer, and Rick Ross claiming he’s the biggest loss 50 Cent ever endured.
Jadakiss/The LOX. As was the case with Fat Joe, 50 Cent took umbrage with Jadakiss appearing on Ja Rule’s “New York” single. 50 Cent included barbs aimed at Jadakiss on “Piggy Bank,” saying that he was only popular in New York. The subsequent and extensive war of words included Jadakiss’s “Checkmate” and 50 Cent and Tony Yayo’s “I Run New York,” among others. Jadakiss’s partners-in-rhyme, The LOX also joined the fray, which many followers said Jadakiss won lyrically, though 50 Cent earned points by attacking Jadakiss’s lack of sales.
Diddy. In 2005, 50 Cent began working with former Diddy protégé Ma$e, who, after becoming one of rap’s most popular artists, had walked away from music in the late 1990s. Ever the businessman, Diddy wasn’t going to let 50 Cent sign Ma$e to his G-Unit Records without being compensated handsomely. The amount, a reported $2 million, was much more than 50 Cent was willing to pay. Scathing disses soon followed. Among the most pointed was the charge that Diddy knew who killed the Notorious B.I.G. but said nothing because he was afraid he’d suffer the same fate.
Nas. One-time Columbia Records label-mates, 50 Cent and Nas’s beef gained traction in 2005 when 50 Cent dissed Nas over his love for then-wife Kelis on his “Piggy Bank” track. Nas responded on 2008’s “Queens Get the Money,” the first track from his Untitled album, saying that 50 Cent was hiding behind the success of mentors Eminem and Dr. Dre.
Cam’ron. While doing an interview with Angie Martinez on New York radio station Hot 97 in 2007, 50 Cent fielded a call from Cam’ron, whose Diplomats company released material through KOCH Records at the time. 50 Cent had previously called KOCH a “graveyard” for recording artists, spurring an on-air argument that turned profane and hostile. 50 Cent included the blistering Cam’ron diss “Funeral Music” as a bonus track on protégé Young Buck’s 2007 album, Buck the World. Cam’ron responded with the diss cut “Curtis,” which is 50 Cent’s given name.
Young Buck. Like the Game, Young Buck fell out of favor with his G-Unit mentor. Young Buck got off to a promising start with 50 Cent, releasing the platinum Straight Outta Ca$hville album in 2004 and the acclaimed Buck The World project in 2007. By April 2008, though, things had gotten bad enough between the pair that 50 Cent announced that Young Buck was no longer in G-Unit. Two months later, 50 Cent released a phone conversation between Young Buck and himself in which Young Buck was crying, asking 50 Cent to let him back into the crew, and explaining that he was having financial issues. The two eventually reconciled.
By the time the Game was gaining steam in 2004, it had been about twenty years since Los Angeles gangs had migrated to the Midwest and other regions. Ice Cube rapped about it in 1991 on his “My Summer Vacation” and DJ Quik detailed how he saw the imprint Southern California gangs had left on Oakland, St. Louis, San Antonio, and Denver on 1992’s “Jus Lyke Compton.”
Kansas City rapper Tech N9ne witnessed the spread of the Bloods gang firsthand. “They moved into our neighborhood in the early eighties,” Tech N9ne said. “Thirty-seventh Street Fruit Town Brim moved in our neighborhood in the Fifties [as in Kansas City’s Fifty-seventh Street, for instance] and brought that shit to us. So when we see people like Game repping, we realize that’s a soldier over there that’s been through it, so we connect that way. . . . Not only with Blood, but he was rapping his ass off. Still to this day. Lyrics, homie. That’s respect.”
The Game unleashed a seemingly unending quantity of material before and after he signed with 50 Cent. With 50 Cent and Dr. Dre backing him, though, the Game had a clear path to stardom.
“Nobody was in their way,” DJ Quik said. “They were like the new Lakers, just to use that metaphor. Just a new, gunning team that had the legs for it and [was] going to develop into stars. That’s what I saw it as. They just came in hungry and wasn’t nobody standing in their way. Not even us, ’cause we had kind of moved on already. We’re the old school now at this point. But they came in and looked up to us, kind of, and we gave them our music, the music we still deem to be cutting edge.”
Having Eminem in 50 Cent and, by default, the Game’s corner also added mainstream legitimacy to both acts and introduced them to a vast audience. After all, Eminem’s 2000 and 2002 albums, The Slim Shady LP and The Eminem Show, had sold more than nine million and eight million copies, respectively, at the time.
“Eminem had become the juggernaut of hip-hop at that point,” DJ Quik said. “[There] was no denying that. [This was] something we had never seen. For him to have the foresight to be able to see that 50 would be a dope artist, and then who would see that 50 would birth Game? It couldn’t have landed more perfectly. That’s as good a run of West Coast hip-hop mixed with East Coast hip-hop that I’ve ever seen. That was a whole new thing. Technically, that was the aftermath.”
But 50 Cent and the Game’s union was short-lived. The rappers began making comments about each other in the media, namely about 50 Cent making the Game viable and writing the choruses for and appearing on his singles “How We Do” and “Hate It or Love It.” On February 28, 2005, a few weeks after the release of the Game’s debut major label album, The Documentary, there was an altercation and shooting outside of New York radio station Hot 97.
The Game had conducted an interview there earlier in the day and returned when 50 Cent appeared that night. The Game, though, was not allowed to enter the building, which led to an altercation and to twenty-four-year-old Compton, California, resident Kevin Reed being shot. 50 Cent announced on the radio station that night that he was kicking the Game out of G-Unit because he was disloyal. 50 Cent had taken issue with the Game because he would not side with him on his laundry list of beefs, including Nas, with whom the Game wanted to record.
“You had to judge him on his talents, not how solid of a gangbanger and street brawler he is. It’s really about his fuckin’ music.”
DJ QUIK ON THE GAME
Even though 50 Cent and the Game stopped working together and continued dissing each other, the Game pulled off a remarkable feat over the next several years: Despite being 50 Cent’s protégé and being disparaged by his mentor, he launched and sustained a significant career, one that continues today and has expanded to film (Waist Deep, Street Kings) and television (Marrying the Game). Like 50 Cent, the Game kept his name in the headlines by taking shots at other artists. More importantly, though, he continued releasing quality material.
“I think he was all right after leaving G-Unit because he still delivered records,” Big Boy said. “He stayed extremely relevant. Usually when you’re in that kind of crew, the big dog can silence a mothafucker. . . . But Game, I think he took off and ran.”
With 50 Cent and the Game established as gangster rap’s latest superstars, the genre moved into its third decade.
