Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson brought last year’s The Final Lap Tour to cities around the world, from Atlanta and Toronto to Amsterdam and Oslo. Las Vegas was not on that 20th anniversary celebration of his debut album Get Rich or Die Tryin’, but he’s more than making up for it this holiday season with a six-show gift presented at Planet Hollywood. The In Da Club series may be as transformational to 50 Cent’s career specifically, and hip-hop residencies in general, as the album it was named for.
He did stop in at Drai’s Beachclub and Nightclub for two nights in September after the star-studded Humor & Harmony festival in Shreveport, La., that he organized to benefit the city’s underserved youth communities. He also came to town in February for a four-song performance at AREA15, but Vegas has yet to behold the career-spanning marathon concert sets 50 last unfurled on Aug. 18 in Bucharest.
Romanian hip-hop heads got more than a retrospective of Get Rich, the album that served as a hinge moment between the Bad Boy Records era and the rise of Kanye West. “What Up Gangsta” kicked things off, but the Queens-born rapper quickly slid into “I Get Money” from 2007’s Curtis and covers of The Game’s “Hate It or Love It” and “How We Do” before turning to his own hits such as “Disco Inferno,” “P.I.M.P.” and “Candy Shop.”
Life was no candy shop for young Jackson, who was born a year before the Trammps scored a hit with their “Disco Inferno” in 1976. After his mother died, he turned to crime to survive and boxing for self-preservation. He’d serve time as he developed his rapping ability, but he also developed a mentality that allowed him to find a path out of his South Jamaica neighborhood in Queens and put him on the radar of Eminem and Dr. Dre.
First, he’d get a record deal with Columbia, get shot nine times, then get dropped by Columbia. 50 Cent, who named himself after a diminutive Brooklyn stick-up artist who was active in the 1980s and known for his fearlessness and resilience, set about building both his body and his legend as he refined his style.
With Dre and Eminem on board, Get Rich or Die Tryin’ debuted at No. 1 in February 2003, revived the gangsta rap genre with pop chart-ready tracks and positioned 50 Cent to become an entrepreneur extraordinaire. He endorsed his own flavor of Vitaminwater, began a publishing company and began creating a media empire with an autobiographical film that took its title from the album.
It’s not an unorthodox road for a rapper who suddenly comes into money, but 50 Cent proved to possess a farsightedness and wisdom few of his peers could claim. Alcohol and drug free, he recorded with his group G-Unit and ran his own label as he grew his business interests into an empire.
Now he’s celebrating by rapping in the New Year with six shows in Las Vegas, an accomplishment he’ll likely want to turn into habit.
Planet Hollywood, 9 p.m. Dec. 27-28, 30, Jan. 3-4 and 10 p.m. Dec. 31, starting at $105 plus tax and fee. ticketmaster.com
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