The Spin Interview: 50 Cent (Bigger, Longer, and Uncut)

When you recorded the songs for Power of a Dollar, were you convinced you were going to make it big?
I felt like I was ready in 1997 when I was writing music with Jam Master Jay. But I was so far from being ready. In '99, I put out "How to Rob" [the barbed single in which 50 threatens to clean out "industry niggas," from Diddy to DMX to Wu-Tang to Timbaland) because Columbia wasn't understanding what I was trying to do creatively, and it just took off. It was almost taboo to mention names on a record after Tupac and Biggie got shot; nobody wanted that type of friction.

It was controversial, but it was also funny. Rappers aren't known for having a good sense of humor about themselves, though. What did you expect would happen?
I knew people would misinterpret it, and they did. But for me, there was no Plan B. I absolutely had to be a success in music. The only thing positive in my life was music, so I said what I needed to say. I mean, the lyric on the record is: "This ain't serious / Being broke will make you delirious." So if somebody wants to take it seriously, then they just want to misinterpret it, or they're just really fuckin' stupid.

There were several times on Power of a Dollar when you stepped back and said that you weren't serious.
I don't do that anymore because the intention has changed. When I was in the early phase of my career, I was at a desperate point. My entire company had no idea who I was, and that was me trying to make them understand, but they just didn't get it. But what they provided for me was a functioning record company that I could learn from. I'd get up every morning and go to Columbia like I had to go to work. I'd go see my product manager and learn what his responsibilities were. I'd go hang out in the street department and see how they did mix-show radio, and then learn the responsibilities of the A&R [team]. I'd be up with the art director, watching what he did. I was the intern who couldn't get sent to the store for coffee. [Laughs] They gave me the information that was necessary for me to know what to do when they dropped me.

You've said that the new album, Curtis, is partly about you going back and exploring how you felt before you were even known as 50 Cent, when you were a little kid.
I wrote and recorded lyrics for this album at my grandmother's house again. I went back in the basement, where you have to bend down the ceiling is so low, where I wrote Get Rich or Die Tryin'. Being in that environment helped me remember things. I had to dig deeper. I'm not actually in that lifestyle; it's not surrounding me as much as it did prior to Get Rich.

What is it about that time that you are trying to capture?
Those points where I was more vulnerable. After I've been a success, there hasn't been that much vulnerability for me.

What kinds of vulnerabilities?
Well, when I was younger, I experienced being beaten up. You know, that's actually what brings out the aggression I have now. When I was ten years old, my mom had already passed, and I'd get into physical altercations. I'd get jumped. To me, after my mom passed, everything, literally, that went wrong, went wrong because she wasn't there. If I wanted to go to the park, and it would start drizzling, it was happening because my mom wasn't there -- because everything good came from her.

But she was a drug dealer?
Like I say on the record, "My mom told her baby boy the Lord was gonna bless us / Then dope bought us the shit that food stamps wouldn't get us / And they don't understand we were just trying to make it / But where I'm from when you want shit you gotta take it." Only a child would think that the Lord's blessing would be dope. The innocence of that line is the significance in it. My mom hustled, so everything I experienced having that was nice came from her making that decision. She didn't she see welfare or Burger King as a real option. She did what she thought she had to do to take care of me.

You haven't ever really written about your own family -- your son, Marquise, or his mother.
You know why I wouldn't do it? Because it would be hard for me to make reference to her without being disrespectful. [50 has been feuding in court over child support with Marquise's mom, Shaniqua Tompkins.] Say, if my mom was using drugs, I would probably lose respect for her. But if someone else was disrespectful to her, I would respond immediately. And my son has so many of my qualities that I feel like he would feel the same way, even if it was his father saying it. He would find some resentment toward me for saying something bad about his mother, so I don't talk about it.

That's much different than how Eminem has handled it.
I got no comment on that. But also, my son's mom had a daughter before me, and I've never really talked about her because I wanted to allow her to have a relationship with her dad. She's gone down South to see her father on vacation in the summer, and I'll call and ask her if she's having fun, and she'll say, "No, not really." And I'll say, "Why?" and she'll say, "Because he's cheap." And that really bothered me because he's not cheap; he's not cheap at all. He just doesn't have what I have. And that's, like, damn, I can remember being where he is.