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Page 1
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For hip-hop fans, 50 Cent is the chief that all hail ...
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Page 2
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50 fears Eminem and Dre; Em didn't know 50 would be such "a problem" ...
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Page 3
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Dre blends gunshots with pianos, and why Eminem annoys 50 ...
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Page 4
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"Oh sh--, somebody shot me in the face!"...
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Page 5
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Jam Master Jay warns 50 to stay out of the 'hood ...
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50 Cent: Sway Tells The Story Behind The Interview
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Sway sits down with the "bad guy" and gets both sides of 50 Cent
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Photo Gallery
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 Photos from the set of "In Da Club"
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Watch the MTV News Now special "All Eyes On: 50 Cent." Click for schedule.
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Those that have problems with 50 have entirely different reasons for hating him. And they're entirely different people.
"I come from the bottom so the people that dislike me have nothing to lose. I got to be prepared for a knucklehead," the rapper said.
50 wasn't prepared in 2000 when he was assailed with bullets as he sat in the backseat of a car outside his grandmother's Queens residence. He was shot several times in the leg, in his right thumb (that shell exited through his pinky), his arm and in his mouth. The latter wound shaved off part of his gums and left a hole in between the top and bottom rows of his teeth, and would cause a small, but permanent, change in his voice.
"It happens so fast that you don't even get a chance to shoot back," he said about the attack. "You can't move. Your first reaction is to move and then the shots is going off and you jumping around the backseat. I was scared the whole time. Ain't nobody gonna tell you they ain't scared in that situation. It's a hit, man. You supposed to die in that situation. They're not playing.
"[After they finished shooting] I was looking in the rearview mirror like, 'Oh sh--, somebody shot me in the face!" he continued. "It burns. Burns, burns, burns. The adrenaline is pumping so fast that the pain is not really that bad until the doctors finish with you. Then that morphine wears off and then you're introduced to the pain."
He spent 13 days in the hospital, and it would take him close to five months to rehabilitate himself. During part of that time he had to use a walker to get around. The physical therapy and workout regimen, though, helped him attain his current fit physique.
50 first encountered life-changing distress almost two decades ago. When he was 8 years old, his mother, who used to hustle in their neighborhood, was murdered.
"My grandmother and them told me, 'Your mother's not coming home,' " he recollected nonchalantly. " 'She's not gonna come back to pick you up. You're gonna stay with us now.' That's when I started adjusting to the streets a little bit."
As young Curtis became a little older, he delved further into the streets, and by the time he was 12 he was already following in his mother's footsteps.
"Yeah, she did her thing," he stated, showing no emotion. "That's what made it easier to get involved with selling drugs, because all of the people that I had met when I was young were all people who sold drugs."
50's narcotics peddling caught up to him, not while he was standing on a corner serving some addict, but during a regular day at Andrew Jackson High School.
"At that point I was hustling, so I used to hide [the crack] pieces from my grandmother," he recounted. "I had it in a pair of gym shoes and I picked up the wrong gym shoes [to wear to school]. I went to school and at the time at Andrew Jackson we had metal detectors. So when we went through the metal detection at the high school, [they ended up searching me and] they found the pieces and they locked me up. I was out of school for a few weeks.
"I was embarrassed that I got arrested like that," 50 continued. "That's the worst way to get arrested. After I got arrested I stopped hiding it. I was telling my grandmother [openly], 'I sell drugs.' "
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Photo: Shady/Aftermath
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