Curtis Jackson III was born in Queens, New York, on July 6, 1975. In the late ’90s, he began his rap career as 50 Cent, and made friends and enemies all over Queens, recording with Run-DMC’s Jam Master Jay, opening shows for Nas, feuding with another up-and-coming rapper, Ja Rule, and getting on the wrong side of local drug lord Kenneth “Supreme” McGriff. 50 Cent signed to Columbia Records and was poised to release his debut album when he was shot nine times in May 2000, barely surviving.
After recovering from the shooting, 50 Cent began releasing a massive amount of music on free mixtapes with his G-Unit crew, becoming an underground sensation in New York and attracting the attention of Eminem and Dr. Dre. Signing to Shady/Aftermath, 50 Cent released the 2003 blockbuster Get Rich or Die Tryin’, an album so massively popular that he quickly became Eminem’s biggest competition for hip-hop supremacy. Starting his own label, G-Unit Records, 50 Cent became a cottage industry unto himself, producing films, publishing books, and releasing platinum albums by G-Unit members Lloyd Banks, Young Buck, and the Game, who he’d kick out of the group and feud with for years.
50 Cent in 2003 in Beverly Hills, California. (Credit: Gregory Bojorquez/Getty Images)
At a certain point, all the merchandise, business ventures, and beefs with Ja Rule, the Game, Rick Ross, and others started to overshadow 50 Cent’s music, and he eventually turned his focus to producing popular TV dramas for the Starz network. He remains one of the biggest stars hip-hop has ever produced, though, and in 2023 he celebrated two decades of Get Rich or Die Tryin’ by performing in over 100 arenas on the Final Lap Tour.
With 50 Cent turning 50 years old, here’s a look back at all the albums and mixtapes he made, both as a solo artist and with G-Unit, in his remarkable career.
20. War Angel LP (2009)
“Prepare for total destruction,” warns the cheesy airbrushed cover art for War Angel LP that depicts 50 Cent with feathery wings. There’s some good production on the mixtape, released as a free download on his MySpace era social network platform Thisis50. But 50’s lyrics are mostly tiresome tough guy bluster, and only the Dr. Dre-produced bore “OK, You’re Right” was reprised on the major label album Before I Self Destruct a few months later. The smooth and cinematic “Cocaine” featuring Robin Thicke is the highlight of a project marred by 50’s goofy British accent on “London Girl” and a homophobic rant about rappers who wear skinny jeans on “CREAM 2009.”
19. The Big 10 (2011)
50 Cent spent the early 2010s hyping up albums that were ultimately never released: Street King Immortal, The Return of the Heartless Monster and an experiment with dance beats called Black Magic. After going a couple of years without releasing a project, he returned to the mixtape circuit with The Big 10, celebrating a decade since his early G-Unit mixtapes. The single “I Just Wanna,” a Tony Yayo collaboration sampling KC and the Sunshine Band, was a catchy minor hit. But several tracks are dragged down by features from unpromising new proteges including Kidd Kidd, a New Orleans rapper who’d jumped over to G-Unit from Lil Wayne’s Young Money label. “50 seems less like the pitiless conqueror of Get Rich or Die Tryin’ and more like your drunk, embittered uncle, leaning in to regale you with a beery-eyed treatise on exactly how and where everything went wrong,” Jayson Greene wrote in the SPIN review of The Big 10.
18. T.O.S. (Terminate On Sight) with G-Unit (2008)
50 Cent is one of rap’s great masters of singsong hooks, so when most of his contemporaries started using AutoTune to help them rap with more melody, it made sense for him to give the trendy technology a try. But from the moment 50 started warbling “woah woah woah woah” at the beginning of “Rider Pt. 2,” it was clear that his voice just sounds bad with AutoTune, and he wisely never made a habit of using the vocal effect. 50 Cent ousted Young Buck from G-Unit in the middle of the rollout for the group’s second major label album, but Buck’s verses remained on four songs on T.O.S. By that point, though, Lloyd Banks was the only really consistent MC in G-Unit, and his best showcase “Ready Or Not” is buried toward the end of the album.
17. Animal Ambition: An Untamed Desire to Win (2014)
50 Cent continued promoting Street King Immortal in 2012 and 2013, releasing a series of star-studded singles including “My Life” featuring Eminem and Adam Levine, “New Day” featuring Dr. Dre and Alicia Keys, and “We Up” featuring Kendrick Lamar. After Interscope repeatedly delayed the album, he left his longtime label and signed a new distribution deal with Caroline Records, and Animal Ambition was touted as a buzz-building appetizer for Street King Immortal (the latter project was finally officially canceled in 2021). Animal Ambition remains his most recent proper retail album, driven by some excellent production from Frank Dukes and Jake One. But the tracks featuring 50’s former rivals from the Lox, Jadakiss and Styles P., are anticlimactic and cluttered up with unwelcome Kidd Kidd verses.
16. Curtis (2007)
50 Cent’s net worth took a huge jump in 2007 when he reportedly made $100 million or more from his ownership stake in Vitaminwater when it was sold to Coca-Cola. Everything else went a little sideways for him that year, though. He named his third album Curtis after a Cam’ron diss track tried to use his first name as a taunt, and 50 lost to Kanye West in a highly touted sales war when the album was released the same day as Graduation. The muddled, middling Curtis contained one runaway smash, the snarling club banger “I Get Money,” but most of its many singles failed to connect with the public. Forgetting the lyrics to one of those flops, “Amusement Park,” during a chaotic BET Awards performance, 50 Cent shrugged and implied that he was now so rich that none of this really mattered: “Vitaminwater, ladies and gentlemen! Vitaminwater!” “The I-need-love pop tunes are not getting any better, even with Timbaland and Justin Timberlake in the stripper ditty ‘AYO Technology,’” Rob Sheffield wrote in the Rolling Stone review of Curtis.
15. Forever King (2009)
A week after Michael Jackson’s death, Curtis Jackson (no relation) paid tribute to the pop icon with the mixtape Forever King. The tape had been mostly completed already under the working title Sincerely Southside Part 2, though, and the occasional “rest in peace” shout outs and sample of MJ’s “I Wanna Be Where You Are” on “Michael Jackson Freestyle” feel like perfunctory last minute additions. Still, the mixtape’s relaxed vibe and ‘90s R&B samples were a big improvement from War Angel LP, released three weeks earlier.
In 2014, 50 Cent moved into television, executive producing and co-starring in the Starz crime drama Power, which quickly became a ratings hit and spawned several spinoff series. 50 hasn’t made a lot of music since becoming a TV mogul, and his last solo project was The Kanan Tape, named after his Power character Kanan Stark. “Body Bags,” produced by the Alchemist, feels like a glimpse at how 50’s music might have evolved if he’d kept releasing albums over the last decade, when many east coast rap veterans have made stripped-down, sample-driven records with Alc.
13. Get Rich or Die Tryin’: Music from and Inspired by the Motion Picture (2005)
For his first acting role, 50 Cent followed Eminem’s blueprint, playing an aspiring rapper in a story loosely based on his own life. Get Rich or Die Tryin’ wasn’t nearly as successful as 8 Mile at the box office, and didn’t spin off a soundtrack hit as iconic as “Lose Yourself.” Still, the movie’s companion album has some great 50 Cent solo tracks like “Hustler’s Ambition” while showcasing the expanded G-Unit Records roster that now included the New York rap veterans Mobb Deep, Ma$e, and M.O.P. “A number of the tracks here are laments as much as they are boasts, with tracks like Spider Loc’s ‘Things Change’ and Tony Yayo’s ‘Fake Love’ lamenting the stresses of newfound riches and the ease with which those riches can be lost,” Mike Schiller wrote in the Pop Matters review of the soundtrack.
12. Bulletproof (2005)
50 Cent was everywhere in November 2005, releasing a feature film, a video game, and soundtrack albums for both projects in the space of a couple weeks. The soundtrack for 50 Cent: Bulletproof, a third person shooter game for PlayStation 2 and Xbox, was a gritty mixtape in the style of his pre-Interscope work, hosted by DJ Whoo Kid and produced entirely by Sha Money XL. Given how slick the rest of 50’s 2005 output was, Bulletproof was a breath of fresh air, and included his most entertaining Game diss track, “Not Rich, Still Lyin’.”
11. The Lost Tape with DJ Drama (2012)
After G-Unit made mixtapes into a mainstream phenomenon, it was DJ Drama, a Philadelphia native based in Atlanta, who ran the mixtape scene in the mid-2000s, making classic tapes with Jeezy, Lil Wayne, and others. So when 50 Cent and Drama finally united for The Lost Tape, it felt like a full circle moment to connect their respective eras. 50 Cent made his last Top Ten appearance on the Hot 100 guesting on Jeremih’s 2010 single “Down on Me,” and they linked up again for The Lost Tape’s standout “Planet 50.”
10. 5 (Murder By Numbers) (2012)
5 (Murder By Numbers) was a mixtape featuring songs recorded for the earliest version of Street King Immortal, and the 31-minute collection feels like a major label 50 Cent album with all the annoying crossover attempts trimmed off. The Sizzla-sampling opener “My Crown” featured a rare, surprisingly good double time flow from 50 Cent, and he had strong musical chemistry with rising talents like Hit-Boy and ScHoolboy Q. “5 (Murder By Numbers) is not bad, not great—just good,” Mark Lelinwalla wrote in the XXL review.
9. God’s Plan with G-Unit (2002)
“This motherfucker 50, dog, is the illest motherfucker alive in the world,” Eminem says in the famous voicemail to Sha Money XL that plays at the beginning of God’s Plan. Released three months before Get Rich or Die Tryin’ propelled him to superstardom, God’s Plan is 50 Cent’s last defiant moment as an underdog, ripping beats like Beanie Sigel’s “The Truth” and Biggie’s “My Downfall.” Even G-Unit’s perennial underachiever Tony Yayo blacks out over Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg’s “Deep Cover.” “Gangsta’d Up” features a heartfelt shoutout to Jam Master Jay, apparently recorded the night 50’s mentor was murdered.
8. Power of the Dollar (2000)
The Brooklyn production duo Trackmasters, then on a hot streak of hits for Nas and Foxy Brown, signed 50 Cent to Columbia Records in 1999. His debut single “How to Rob,” a hilarious track full of punchlines about sticking up famous rappers, gave 50 his first taste of fame and even provoked responses from Jay-Z, Big Punisher, the Wu-Tang Clan, and others. After he was shot, however, Columbia dropped him and shelved the album, releasing just a few tracks as an EP. 50 Cent’s music had a little less drama and gravitas in the early days, but his sense of humor and melodic hooks are all there on his widely bootlegged debut, and his flow was a little faster and flashier before the bullet shrapnel in his tongue changed the way he rapped.
By the end of 2009, 50 Cent was starting to seem like a dinosaur, an old-fashioned NYC gangsta rapper in a changing landscape full of new blog rap stars like Drake and Kid Cudi. That means that Before I Self Destruct, a much better attempt at a slick mainstream rap album than Curtis with catchy radio singles like “Baby By Me” and “Do You Think About Me,” was received with a shrug just a few years after he was hip-hop’s undisputed top star. “He’s still got that voice, and when he wants, it can still intoxicate and overwhelm with sheer menace,” Ian Cohen wrote in the Pitchfork review of Before I Self Destruct.
6. No Mercy, No Fear with G-Unit (2002)
No Mercy, No Fear was released shortly after 50 Cent signed a million dollar contract with Shady/Aftermath, and he tipped his hat to his new boss by rapping over two tracks from The Eminem Show along with songs by LL Cool J and De La Soul. 50’s breakthrough chart hit “Wanksta” debuted on No Mercy, No Fear and he began to develop one of his mixtape signatures, tracks where he just raps one verse and then rants and talks shit for a long, wildly entertaining spoken outro.
5. 50 Cent is the Future with G-Unit (2002)
In the ‘90s, hip-hop mixtapes were usually assembled by DJs, who’d compile the latest hits and get a few exclusive freestyles from rappers over beats from popular songs. After 50 Cent was shot and subsequently blacklisted by the music industry, though, he pioneered a new type of mixtape that was effectively an entire album of new music from one rapper using other artists’ beats, adding not just verses but hooks. The first mixtape from his legendary G-Unit run, the aptly titled 50 Cent is the Future set him on a course to dominate the mainstream while also changing how other artists made mixtapes. He makes tracks by Mobb Deep, Jay-Z and Raphael Saadiq his own, and “A Little Bit of Everything U.T.P.” was 50’s first collaboration with Tennessee rapper Young Buck, who’d become a member of G-Unit months later.
4. The Massacre (2005)
The Massacre had three huge singles that represented 50 Cent the hitmaker at his most hollow and cynical: “Disco Inferno,” “Candy Shop,” and “Just a Lil Bit.” If you swapped out those songs for the three much better singles 50 Cent co-wrote and appeared on for the Game’s 2005 debut The Documentary, however, The Massacre would probably be considered a classic. “A Baltimore Love Thing” and “Ski Mask Way” are two of the most creative songs 50 Cent ever made as he experimented with a more subtle and artful style of gangsta rap. “He’s impossible to love but hard to resist, and though that may not be what he’d prefer, hard to resist will do,” Robert Christgau wrote in the Village Voice review of The Massacre.
3. Guess Who’s Back? (2002)
Shortly before 50 Cent began his mixtape run, he made his surprise return to the rap scene with an album on the independent label Full Clip Records. Guess Who’s Back? features some of the first songs 50 recorded after recovering from his shooting, rapping with an enormous chip on his shoulder on “Fuck You.” The collection also included a handful of the best Power of the Dollar songs like “Ghetto Qur’an” and “Corner Bodega,” making it his most essential pre-Interscope project. Another legendary Queens rapper, Nas, had taken 50 Cent on tour as an opening act and appears on two songs on Guess Who’s Back? After 50’s rise to fame, though, he feuded with Nas, and they wouldn’t collaborate again until 2023.
2. Beg For Mercy with G-Unit (2003)
50 Cent spent the summer of 2003 co-headlining the Roc the Mic Tour with Jay-Z. And at the end of his whirlwind year, 50 took a victory lap with G-Unit’s first major label group album, and he decided to challenge Jay by releasing it the same day at The Black Album. Jay-Z won the sales showdown, but Beg For Mercy was still a multiplatinum phenomenon that turned Lloyd Banks and Young Buck into mainstream stars in their own right. After 50 rapped over Hi-Tek’s beats on his early mixtape tracks “E.M.S.” and “Surrounded By Hoes,” he brought the Rawkus Records producer into the Shady/Aftermath stable for Beg For Mercy, where Hi-Tek’s tracks fit in surprisingly well alongside Dr. Dre and Sha Money XL beats.
1. Get Rich or Die Tryin’ (2003)
Get Rich or Die Tryin’ is one of the biggest debut albums of all time on a technicality, since the many earlier records on this list weren’t properly released in stores by a major label. Still, the album, which has gone platinum nine times, represents an incredibly fast and transformative rise to fame for a rapper who’d been written off and abandoned by the music industry less than three years earlier. “In Da Club” and “21 Questions” topped the Hot 100, “Many Men” cemented 50’s legend as a fearless survivor, and “Patiently Waiting” and “Don’t Push Me” were the first of many great 50/Eminem collaborations. And a DJ could play just about any other song from Get Rich or Die Tryin’ today and instantly transport you back to summer 2003 when the album was absolutely inescapable.
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