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Page 1
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Onstage, 50 Cent hasn't even cracked the top 10 yet ...
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Page 2
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Jay-Z pulls a G move, and Busta tells 50 how to make sure no one survives ...
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Page 3
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50 leaps from a skyscraper and refuses to party with his crew ...
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Photo Galleries
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Onstage With 50 Cent
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Sway Goes Backstage With Eminem And 50 Cent
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Em And 50:
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Kings Of Detroit
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50 Cent:
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Still Hungry After 4 Million Records
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Mixtapes:
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The Other Music Industry
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Browse Bands by Name
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Or enter a band name below to search:
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 Bands Main
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-- by Shaheem Reid, with additional reporting by Sway Calloway
50 Cent wants nothing more than to literally end his show at Jones Beach Theater with a bang. The crowd in Wantagh, New York, has already seen him rap a bevy of tracks from his mixtapes and his official debut album, Get Rich or Die Tryin', bring Snoop Dogg and some "black girls gone wild" onstage, and jump from 10 feet in the air to the ground. Now it's time for the finale, where he'll be rhyming over bass and gunshots. The only thing stopping him is that his DJ, Whoo Kid, is not ready.
"I don't know what the last song is," Whoo Kid shouts down from high above on the stage set, while the crowd looks on, bewildered.
" 'Heat,' di--head," 50 yells back with a mixture of amusement and agitation at the miscue. That's the last song they've been performing every night.
While on the Rock the Mic Tour, 50 knows his shows have to be near flawless. He's following some of the best performers in the game every night, and up until August 5, when the Roc-A-Fella camp ended its stint on the trek, 50 had to go on before Jay-Z's Broadway-like production.
On the streets, airwaves and in stores, there aren't any names that hold more weight than 50 Cent's right now. Before the 27-year-old became the current king of rap with the release of his album in February, he was already the king of the streets, blessed with the biggest buzz in the 'hood since the Notorious B.I.G. His credibility, gained off the strength of his own mixtapes and various appearances on other street CDs, has helped propel the sonically relentless Get Rich or Die Tryin' to sales of more than 6 million units worldwide.
But onstage, 50 hasn't even cracked the top 10 yet.
With his status growing by the week, he never had the opportunity to sit in the wings and learn performance technique before being presented to the public. Last year when a pre-"In Da Club" 50 was selling out clubs solely on the strength of his mixtapes, at times it felt like he didn't have any direction in his live set. The segue from song to song wasn't always smooth, some tracks seemed to come out of nowhere and pull the energy down, his pronunciation wasn't always crisp and his G-Unit hypemen would sometimes be too hype, out-shouting his lyrics with their ad-libs.
50 has, however, shown to be a quick study. During the past 10 months — especially over the summer — his skills have been improving. As the venues he's been performing in continue to grow in size and capacity, Southside Jamaica, Queens' finest has been stepping his game up. He's attending a school-without-walls of sorts, getting a hands-on education in live performance by sharing time in venues with the likes of Jay-Z, Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Missy Elliott and rap's preeminent live showman, Busta Rhymes. Not to mention that tour veteran Dr. Dre is always a phone call or T-Mobile Sidekick page away.
"I watch a lot of these n---as," 50 says about his tourmates. "That's how you learn."
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Photo: John Shearer/MTV News
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