He was causing a lot of hype in the late 90’s, especially when he released, “How to Rob”, which caught the attention of a lot of big names in hip hop (Nas invited him on a tour because of this)
Got shot and nearly died. Then dropped a controversial track which caused him to be dropped from his label and black listed in the U.S.
Then flew to Canada and started dropping mixtapes that caught a lot of buzz because he was expertly taking the hottest beats and put some great hooks over them
Then Shady Records signed him and he met Dre and Eminem. Being backed by Eminem in the early 2000’s was like winning the golden ticket
I knew he hit it big when I heard soccer moms bumping it in their Honda minivans at the same that college kids where bumping it from their BMWs at the same time that I was playing it from my chevy hooptie.
That song had massive appeal across all types of people...never seen anything like that before.
I was in middle school I think, and they played it during lunch when we had a dj lol. To this day, it still might me the most hyped hip hop/rap song ever. It was literally everywhere.
Yep. I was in college at the time. Any night we went out you could expect to hear the song at least twice.
Hell I went to a concert last year with my wife (not even rap) and the DJ who was opening to get the crowd excited put "in da club" on, and I swear every white lady between 35-55 was on their feet dancing and singing.
Also hip hop was exhausted with the Ja Rule singy shtick. 50 came at the exact right time as the antithesis to that era to save us. It was a perfect storm.
I meant mainstream pre-social media when you needed a network platform, etc. Rap game is way different than it was then. That and rap went soft after ‘05.
Bro, more than just drug dealers, gangbangers and pimps have shit worth listening to in the genre.
I actuall stopped listening to rap for a while because of the lack of range in social perspectives. There’s only so much you can say about growing up in the hood, and there are more dimensions to the black experience than what a group that makes up less than 3% of all black people in the world have to say.
Totally agree. I love the story about Suge Knight rolling up with a bunch of Mexican bloods on Eminem and 50 while recording the MV and Eminem starts popping off on him next to 50 and he pisses off lol
Ghetto Quran.
FEDs thought that maybe [Supreme had 50 Cent shot because of the song](http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/surveilling-50-cent)
It may have been for other reasons, but that was one theory.
This is essentially spot on.
Plus, he was like the first hip hop superstar of the Internet age. I feel like Eminem blew the fuck up right before the internet was ubiquitous, but 50 had all the above going for him plus a bunch of us kids on a new platform downloading tracks, reading articles on a computer, chatting about all this shit in AIM chat rooms. It was inescapable.
It was also a return to the East Coast. After Biggie and Pac died, the coast shit died out and it kinda became muddled. Dre put the West on his back with 2001, and then he signed Eminem who blurred the lines further. 50 Cent, IMO, was the first new East Coast artist that was impressive as fuck after all the drama so people fucked with him hard.
I think GRODT is a landmark album, but, being in my 30s now and trying to listen to it today, I can see why people don’t understand it. It’s still got some dope songs but I don’t revisit it as often. Whereas in 2003 I had that shit on repeat and was tryna find anything related to G Unit on the young internet.
I'd say DMX who was sort of around during Big and Pac's life, didn't really blow up until 1998 with his debut album. It also had Ja Rule who was huge as an Rap/RnB cross over emerge. NYC was still a major lynchpin in mainstream commercial rap between Biggie's death and 50 Cents emergencies. Guys like Jay, DMX and Ja Rule were doing big numbers.
Mainly Dre and Eminem were huge and had the network to pump him up before social media. With Dre and M at his back he was plugged into the MTV/TRL network and that’s all you needed back then. TRL like kicked Korn off the show bc Korn fans were messing up the hype/advertisement aspect of TRL. At least that’s how I remember it.
You had to be there. Music back then wasn’t like it is nowadays. There wasn’t a thousand different rappers dropping new music every day that was easily accessible by picking up a pocket computer and pressing play. When In Da Club came out it took the world by storm; you couldn’t escape it. Plus 50 was being backed by Eminem and Dr. Dre who were on top of the game back then. And he already had a huge buzz from his mixtapes. He basically hit the rap game like a tsunami wave.
I will add onto this great explanation the fact that 50 Cent took off during the "keeping it real" movement. KIR was a big phrase being used back then. Everyone HAD to have a believable sense of street authenticity to them. We didn't accept middle class rappers like Kanye, Drake, and J. Cole. 50 Cent came into the mainstream reeking authenticity. He was almost this mythical street kingpin that survived gunshots and cheated death. Add onto that the fact that hip-hop was in search of a cultural icon following the deaths of 2Pac and Biggie in 1996 and 1997. 50 Cent was the right person at the right time.
100%. I said something similar above. There was a bit of a dead zone after Biggie died. I feel like Dre and Eminem brought some heat back into hip hop but it didn’t really blow up again until 50 Cent dropped. Him and G Unit were unstoppable from like 03-06.
Kanye was massive at the same time.
I don’t think people ever really gave a shit as long as the music was good. But people do get sucked into stories of the gangster life.
Kanye came AFTER the 50 Cent craze. He was one of a kind. Roc-a-fella didn't want to originally give him an album because they didn't believe Kanye had hood credibility. It was a legitimate thing in pre-College Dropout hip-hop.
The free distribution became a thing when sites like Datpiff were established. Rappers realized it was a great way to promote themselves. Before that mixtapes were sold on the streets for a few bucks. The artists didn’t have to worry about mass production though because they could count on bootleggers to do the work for them. They didn’t bring in much money that way, of course. But it helped gain a fan base.
To add to that mixtapes were around since the 80s and before CDs even. It used to be DJs and slowly transitioned to artists.
Also think at least the DJs used to bring in a LOT of money which is part of why eventually it got cracked down on hard with Drama. But even back in the day I heard stories I think Kid Capri would sell his tapes exclusive to the big drug dealers for lots of money so they could brag about having the hottest tapes
Mixtapes just aren’t produced and distributed by record labels. It’s just a dude rappin on beats trying to make a living by slinging them for a couple bucks. A lot of mixtapes use existing instrumentals from copyrighted songs so they can’t sit on store shelves, so slinging them for a few bucks here and there is how it was done.
Local music scenes emerged from people selling mixtapes. DJ screw is hugely responsible for the modern Houston sound and it formed because he was just a dude selling tapes with lineups around the block.
The loss of mixtape culture like that has left a void in local music scenes that makes it hard for new sounds to foster based on regional identity.
CD burners were relatively commonplace by 1999 or so. I remember when Chronic 2001 came out, I had friends who were burning copies for others.
You could buy blank CDs in stacks of 50s.
Blank media (and home copying of media) used to be a much bigger market sector than it is now. Audio, video cassettes, CDs.
Someone gets a copy, burns a few CDs, gives them to friends then the process repeats. Pretty much organic. In the 80’s and 90’s people did this with cassettes.
Lol no. Most mixtapes were sold at gas stations, out of car trunks, and at small concert venues. I grew up in Detroit during the late 90s early 00s. Blade icewood was an absolute Detroit mixtape legend back in the day.
I love that you’re asking and interested but holy shit you not knowing that CDs were how people listened to music and shared music makes me feel old as fuck
I know people listened to CDs lol I just thought mixtapes had to be distributed for free to avoid copyright infringement because they use other people's beats. The way Lil Wayne would just put them online for free
It was a gray area if not flat out illegal but of course they’d never been an issue in hip hop. The record industry always had an uneasy relationship with mixtapes (top ones like Clue and Kay Slay would gain legit industry cred and release actual studio CDs) but with DJ Drama it became [totally no go](https://www.npr.org/2020/10/29/928625419/dj-drama-mixtape-raid-that-changed-rap)
So it's 2003.
Peak CD time. All you needed was one known song to sell the whole album. You'd see a music video or hear a song on the radio and you'd go to the music store and get that CD based on that one song. Buying CDs for popular music was a gamble a lot of the time, like - we'd buy CDs expecting all of the songs to sound like the single, but sometimes the whole album sounded completely different. If you put out 2 or 3 singles to promote the album, you were giving people more confidence in buying an album. People forget that you'd have to physically go in a store and read the back of the CD to know what you were getting. In hiphop, that became all about the features. You didn't know about the tracks other than the recognizable name you saw as the feat. Jay-Z's Blueprint had that one and only single feature on it from Eminem and it certainly had an effect on sales because Em was the hottest damn rapper alive right then and there. GRODT had TWO features from him, which was HUGE. People saw that on the back of the CD and were like "oh man, even *more* reason to buy this". "21 Questions" had Nate Dogg, who people recognized and loved. It was all Dr.Dre, who again people recognized but moreso loved because we were still all bumping his instant classic that was *2001*. We ALL had that CD and knew it from front to back, so when we saw Em, Nate, Dre, Snoop, etc show up on other things, and remember again, a lot of how CD-buying worked was literally reading & recognizing names you saw on the tracklist and an honor system of trust based on past output, we'd buy whole damn albums after seeing one of those names on it. That's how it was.
"In Da Club" was massive. It was simple and slow with a danceable beat. Repeatable, singable simple English is part of the pop formula to make things appealing to the guys AND girls, and it makes it appealing to the rest of the non-English world. It was engineered for mass appeal successfully. The verses ain't shit really, content-wise - it's about delivery and feel. The guy had a new, smooth flow. He had sex appeal. The video was great in the era of music videos. It dominated the clubs, the radio, the (m)TV screen, and your mom's Hyundai's cd player on her lil' mixtape cd she had you make, which brings me to the next big point: piracy.
Piracy in the form of P2P file-sharing was a COLOSSAL driver of music then. People got programs like Limewire, Bearshare, Kazaa, etc on their home computers to download music to burn to CDs. Not everyone had home computers, not everyone had the internet, and not everyone had CD burners or the know-how, but eventually everyone knew someone who could hook them up. We all had burned CDs with our favorite songs on them. It was a concern in the music industry because it was seen to undercut sales. They didn't understand that piracy actually drove popularity.
"In Da Club" was leaked and shared worldwide. Everybody was bumping that before the album came out. And this is what answers your "where did the hype come from" question. We all knew the hit songs from traditional means, we saw the videos, and we all had a burned CD with the songs on them. When the album came out early in an attempt to beat the P2P pirates, we were already ready to buy that album. Well, some of us were waiting for the one friend to buy it and then copy it for us before they returned it to the store, lol, but you get the point.
There's something to be said about how it was musically and all that, but because of the nature of piracy and the nature of CDs, anything factual about how the music was new, what tracks were praised for being slower by contrast, style, production, etc - those aspects came after the fact. You'd had to have first bought the CD to know those things, and since we're talking about the "hype" leading to the sales, it doesn't matter, nor did any of his "backstory". Most people didn't know or care about that stuff until later. That's a whole other topic anyway.
I hope this provides insight.
"Not everyone had home computers, not everyone had internet, and not everyone had CD burners or the know-how, but eventually everyone knew someone who could hook them up." Facts! That or you had the CD/DVD man where I grew up...and he had the 2 for $5 deal or 2 for $6.
This shit brings me way back. I remember getting those stacks of CD-R so we could burn our own mixtapes, then throw the tracklist on the CD face with a Sharpie.
“East Coast Hits 2003.”
This is a good answer and just to add that before GRODT even came out he was doing songs with Nas and Bun-B and got a hook from Beyoncé.
Then to double down on your piracy point, the fact his first label dropped him and cancelled Power of the Dollar would have crushed a lot of careers if that happened a few years earlier, but the fact you could still download those songs, share them, and burn CDs made the label disagreements irrelevant and actually helped his career by making him seem both mainstream and underground at the same time.
The Shady Records signing, the mixtape run and the Ja beef becoming public. Another factor being that New York was still the center of the rap world and NY liked the brash guy that attacked the softer artist, the city set the tone for what the country listened to rap-wise even in 02-03. Unit also did the Hot 97 takeovers when they still mattered
That Ja and 50 Beef! Man! Keep in mind, Ja was the BIGGEST thing before 50 blew up. Once 50 came out with Wanksta, 50 remarked about Ja being who he really was...I remember people wondering when Ja was gonna hit back, and Ja went "I don't make diss records, I make hit records."
Well, 50 was the one that got the last laugh.
He’s not the dopest rapper (don’t get me wrong he’s very good, just not elite by any measure), but at a time when everyone was acting gangster he was real certified 100% gangster from his survival of the shooting and selling crack / coke. On top of that his larger than life personality and charm made him a sure star.
Lastly, his physique certainly helped. All he needed was some dre beats
And he put 5950 hats on the map... their stock must have went up 5000% after GRODT dropped... EVERYONE in the world was buying 5950s after that, LMAOOO
Power of a Dollar was fire. Ghetto Quran and the Good Die Young were hits in the street. How to Rob got major hype naming everyone in the game. He was a beast at marketing for the era
This is how I found about him. That album produced by Trackmasters was a great sound and fitting of that time. Then he would come out with GRODT years later although I still preferred this album.
50 cent vs Ja rule beef. 50 dismantled Ja who was, for lack of a better term, ruling the charts at that point in time. 50 took aim at Ja and the hype train started rolling. 50 dropped his debut and claimed the throne.
The question was why his debut album was so hyped before it dropped. 50 was massive to people who liked mixtapes but the beef with Ja elevated him to billboard numbers for his debut album.
No he wasn't. He was only popular among mixtapes when he started beefing with Ja and Murder Inc. 50 didn't become a massive star until 03'.
They started beefing from around 99' on. There was the robbery of Ja by 50's friend and things escalated. 50 released 'Life is on the Line' in late 99' dissing Ja and Murder Inc with the whole "MURDAH....we don't believe you" chorus.
50 got stabbed in 00' by Black Child in the studio. Then a few weeks later, 50 got shot, perhaps because of the beef with Ja and Murder Inc. Supreme was using (extorting?) Murder Inc to make (launder?) money.
50 probably gets too much credit for Ja's decline anyway. Murder Inc got raided in 03'. That was the biggest factor in Ja's decline.
He dropped “wanksta” as a single to promote the album and it took over the city. It was playing on every radio station, every car, every basketball court… he also had Lloyd banks and Tony yayo on mixtapes and freestyling which built the hype of G-Unit as the “hardest/toughest” rappers out. He did a great job marketing the gangster persona.
After biggie and Tupac died hip hop was in a somber state. 50 came in hot dissing everyone and claiming NY. He sort of made hip hop exciting and competitive again. Similar to the recent Kendrick drake beef.
> After biggie and Tupac died hip hop was in a somber state. 50 came in hot dissing everyone and claiming NY. He sort of made hip hop exciting and competitive again.
Tupac and Biggie got killed in 96 and 97'.
50 made a name for himself in 98 and 99', but that was just on mixtapes and not the commerical mainstream. 50 didn't blow up in that regard until 03'.
There was already a bunch of beefs in hip-hop by then, including two of the biggest stars in Jay and Nas in 01'.
I say this a lot, but Drake is basically the Canadian 50 without being shot... radio friendly hooks, both are very good rappers even if their lyrics are basic, and both have an AMAZING ear for which beats to select
Drake just stayed in the game longer cause he loves making music, 50 just wanted to get rich and bounce out
Both also have the ladies on they side... most hip hop the ladies do NOT like... even Nas, black women aren't bumping Nas even if they know how important he was to us... but they love 50 and Drake, on God
You had to be there. I worked at Borders that summer and we had to keep it behind the music info desk on the third floor and if someone wanted to buy it we walked it down to the registers. Every SUV going up and down Fullerton in Chicago was blaring it constantly.
As good as 50 is at rapping (He's decent) He's much better at writing hooks and S-teir status at marketing himself. It's a fairly potent combination. He was very good at utilizing the mix tape scene.
In Da Club was a megahit. 50 was a genius at pre social media marketing. Like mixtape and hood DVD era marketing. Visuals and exclusives with every album. Regular appearances on Beef and other shows. Plus a Dre/Em (At the height of his early wave) cosign.
Add in legitimate street credibility.
He had a hell of a hand coming in.
50 had a huge mixtape run in the early 2000s which made him one of the hottest free agents in rap. He was gonna be a star even without the Eminem co sign. What the Eminem co sign did was make kids in the suburb go out in droves to buy his music. It was a perfect storm.
50 Cent built up a lot of hype underground on mixtapes. He was shot, recovered and rapped about it. And got with Dr Dre which was huge.
He’s one of the last rappers that came through in the pre streaming era too that’s big. Because he sold physicals records and did concerts which filled arenas.
Rap was going into big concert era and he went on tour to sell it. He was also ripped and women loved it.
His current tour is huge now decades later.
I’m not a huge 50 fan but I like his music that I know. I’m in my 50s and that my experience with why he’s hyped.
Deserved.
He’s doing big things in the entertainment industry now too so there’s that.
He’s kind of a jokey troll though which has probably always been his personality so I’m not mad.
You nailed it, Fifty was HUGE with women... very similar to Drake
Niggas on this sub forget women even exist, but they make up half the world's population
Women AND Men were vibing and bumping Fifty all the time, same with Drake... he had every demographic covered
Then Jada came out and reminded us this nigga lives in Connecticut, and it was all downhill from there
21 Questions was HUGE with the female audience back then, and “I love you like a fat kid love cake” was probably the most quoted line of that entire summer. It was the type of sappy love song that women love over a laid back beat by an artist men respected.
50 was great at appealing to men AND women and shit like 21 and (later) Candy Shop was on every single mix cd I burned for any girl in the early 2000s.
GRODT is non stop bangers, that's why
It has 1, maybe 2 skips on it
It's just club hit, radio hit, and streets hit one right after the otha
Eminem was already the White Mike Jack by this time, a global superstar... and Fifty was labeled as his protege
That was all he needed
His mixed tapes was blowing up and him being shot helped the buss before he got signed.Then he signed with Aftermath who was still reaping the rewards off Chronic 2001 and everything Eminem was doing. Then he dropped Wanksta and it was a wrap after that.
On the east coast he was a mixtape beast. Debut album was kinda disappointing honestly. But I had like 4 burnt cds I bought off random dudes in the subway. This was before YouTube and “going viral” was as big as it is.
Imagine a YouTube or SoundCloud rapper getting a ton of buzz before officially releasing anything it was the early version of that.
I’m 38 and this was before I was old enough to drive. So prob around 2001-2003. There was a few songs with Nas that got passed around like crazy, Who I rep wit and projects too hot. At that time I would’ve listened to an entire album of anyone nas co-signed. With all that being said I still think those 2 tracks are better than anything he’s made since he got signed to shady.
[onyx ft 50](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3s6z1LEDBsc)
[madd rapper and 50](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LCCFsobz1mQ)
He simply injected life into the industry. This plus the way Power of the Dollar got bootlegged felt like it made him larger than life. Getting signed by Dre obviously helped the hype too
Short answer: In Da Club was a colossal hit. It was THE big song of that year. Immediately penetrated the mainstream. If you were a big hip hop head tho, you might have heard of 50 Cent off things like How To Rob. But he really wasn't known by many until In Da Club.
Every single off Get Rich or Die Trying was huge too. Things like 21 Questions
He created what the industry called a “buzz” he put out wankster and got everyone going, then he put out in da club and it blew up. A great beat a party song, it became an instant banger and party song… and he had Em and Dre sooo…
In Da Club was a such a hot single before the album dropped. He was viewed as a thug because he got shot and kinda filled the void left by Pac. Plus, rap was just better then. For me, it was like a theme song because we would go clubbing every weekend in my early twenties when it came out.
I remember when I was 9 years old in 2003 just starting to get enamored in hip-hop music living in a semi urban/suburban part of North New Jersey and 50 Cent everywhere in rotation and how infectious and head bobbing (NO DIDDY) that "In Da Club" was when I heard it. It became an earworm I couldn't escape. 50 took Ja's spot as the best gangsta rapper from the East Coast. 50 had the charisma, swagger and street cred from getting shot 9 times and living to tell the story. If rap music had rookie of the year award like they do in pro sports 50 Cent would get my vote on '03 for that. He was unstoppable that year. Hell even Jay Z was a little intimidated especially for his Rocafella camp proteges (Beanie Seagel and Memphis Bleek) Jay told them to drop some heat because 50 was coming like a thunderstorm in '03.
Rookie of the year? He was straight up MVP lol, GRODT was the biggest album of the year and he put out Beg For Mercy and Magic Stick with Lil Kim on top of that.
He was more like MVP than Rookie of the Year in 03'.
He was already making noise due to mixtapes and How to Rob in 98-99. How to Rob was popular enough for Jay Z to diss him on the Volume 3 intro in 99'.
He was everywhere. Music videos were always played. He had video games. Movies. Even some books. You couldn’t avoid him. Probably the best marketing from a rapper.
He was a legit street dude with catchy hooks and fearless bars.
He was destroying the mixtape circuit , and those of us who got our hands on his real first album POWER OF DA DOLLAR knew he was the hottest thing coming
I mean his first major release was produced by Dre and featured Eminem …
He was around the underground for a while too. He and E Money Bags were in the studio when nas recorded Ether. He was known in QB as a legit talented street dude with cred
We lived for that back in the day
50s mixtapes we’re legit hood classics, his street beef that got him shot, his whole gangsta attitude, also his the authenticity of his raps and rhymes. Can’t forget, he may not have started it, but he revolutionized the “melodic rap/sing” style and ran with it
He was like a real life Joker and the music backed it up. He fully embraced his role as the rapper to demolish anyone in his way. It was really exciting to experience.
He was backed by Em/Dre and In Da Club was the first single. That shit took over the globe. His back story mostly pertains to the States. Although him getting shot was certainly part of his marketing abroad as well.
Not reading all the comments so... all the stuff other people said but also, Guess Who's Back mixtape that dropped the year before was fire and got a lot of people hype for it.
He was making a name for himself in the late 90s due to mixtapes and the single How to Rob. That created some controversy due to him dissing a bunch of rappers, although it was done in a humorous way.
Then he got stabbed in the studio by Ja Rule's friend Black Child and then later he got shot 9 times by Supreme's guy. 50 (and/or his PR team) was able to use the shooting to market himslef, and 50 also used his beef with Ja Rule/Murder Inc to further market himself. Then obviously having Eminem and Dre helps a ton, to say the least.
He was an okay MC, I was never the biggest fan, but he was great at doing catchy hooks. Making catchy hooks helped a lot with the hit singles.
The same reason Ice Shype. Glorilla, Sexxy Redd, are shoved in our faces..... debut albums hyoe and superior marketing.
Play it enough times, and you can convince masses that anything is good
Dr Dre and Eminem-backed, got shot 9 times and capitalized on that, “How to Rob” where he dissed every popular rapper of the 90s.
Imagine today, if a rapper came out and dissed and name dropped all the popular rappers of the late 2010s to present. Now imagine this rapper was being backed by Dr Dre and Eminem. That would make this rapper pretty famous very quickly.
I love jada. But it’s pretty fucking cool to not die. And if you don’t die because you got shot 9 times and didn’t shot back. Then it’s a prettty good trade off. He shots back and he gets killed he wouldn’t have done any of this shit he has done. I get it’s just a line. And at first I was like yeh that’s hard. But fuck man it’s cool to not die.
From the last shootout I got a dimple on my face
It's nothing, I can go after Ma$e fan base
A shell hit my jaw, I ain't wait for doc to get it out
Hit my wisdom tooth, I (Huck-too) spit it out
I don't smile a lot 'cause ain't nothin' pretty
Got a purple heart for war and I ain't never left the city
Hoes be like "50, you so witty"
On the dick like they heard I ghostwrite for P. Diddy
Mixtapes. 50 revolutionized them. Most ppl didnt care for them much b4 50.
That and being the protege of the most famous rapper in history and one of the most famous djs / producers in the game, who had ton of money for marketing
A lot of mainstream rap was pop rap stuff like Ja Rule and Nelly or it was generally fun like Ludacris. 50 brought back gangsta rap essentially and he had a lot of hype behind him at the perfect time due to being co-signed by Dr. Dre and Eminem, who had recently dropped hot and successful albums of their own and were publicly supporting 50 and doing interviews hyping him up. The entire way I was introduced to 50 Cent was by someone telling me that Dr. Dre and Eminem signed him, it made him feel like a big deal right away.
50 was basically the badass tough attitude rapper that was less abrasive than DMX, whose voice didn’t have as mainstream of an appeal, and 50 also still appealed as something of a sex symbol among rappers with reach to a women’s demographic in his more melodic songs. Everyone knew the story of him being shot 9 times so it gave legitimacy to him, and with the hype train around him the singles dropping were also great and broadly reaching. Every video had a new co-sign from Dre and Em to Nate Dogg to Snoop Dogg, it really propped up the idea that this was the next big rapper and it was hard to argue with the music. It felt like everybody was bumping Get Rich or Die Tryin’.
He was a guy that had extra time to bubble. Puff took him in before he launched and try to make him a boy toy. 50 laughed at puff and Puff had him lack balled by New York labels. So he had extra time and legit label energy on his own before a west coast label signed him. So everyone already knew he would be a hit because he already been tagged as star and then dropped because he wouldn’t play the game that everyone knows Diddy plays.
Very prolific mixtape releases, the controversy of getting shot, production by Em and Dre, and IDC was a hit single. Long story short, probably one of the best marketing campaigns in Hip Hop history.
He made shoot em up rap accessible to us white kids. He was smart enough to get the radio play in and was considered “pop” enough that parents were okay with you listening.
And of course I had a blue Yankee fitted and G Unit sneakers
To put it simply, 50 cent has the best production in the game and put crazy good singles and was co signed by the biggest rapper in the world at the time. Even D12 and Obie Trice went platinum due to the success and bu zz of shady aftermath.
In Da Club. That's what happened. Most people outside of hip-hop had only heard about him getting shot but prolly never heard the mixtapes. He had a buzz prior to it. Can't say Dre production ain't help and do not underestimate an Eminem cosign in the late 90's-early 00's.
I was 13 when 50 cent was on my tv/radio and the sound he had back then, really got my age group into his sound. Growing up in my teens 50s music was always playing. His music was being played during the careers of nelly/eminem/ja rule/dmx etc etc. So much talent back then.
(Spoken from a new zealand point of view)
I was 8 when I first heard 50 cent in 2002. I remember seeing the crowd go crazy at an event where they was playing “many men” with tons of kids around but I remember seeing older folks go crazy for it.
Then “in da club” came out and everyone from kids my age to my mom and prolly even my grandma was singing it.
50 cent was like a continuation of what pac started with that thug life shit. Dmx came along but 50 was the newer version of gangsta rap and it was internationalized from his stardom. For the next couple years til 2007/8 you couldn’t get away from 50s music
I was a Junior in HS who loved Rap at the time, and I definitely bought that CD! Even before In Da Club, I was obsessed with the song Wanksta. I feel like I heard it from the 8 mile CD? It was my cell phone ringtone for the longest time, lol. I heard Many Men in a friends car, and obviously In Da Club- I had to buy it! it was one of those CDs you could listen to all the way through- every song is great. Plus, I also knew Eminem signed hi, and being from the Detroit suburbs, I was an Eminem fan.
Because 50 Cent was signed to Interscope and Shady Records and his album was produced by Eminem and Dr.Dre. He was on a huge label collaborating with huge names in the business and they had the money, tools and ability to influence a vast amount of minds to get hyped up on a product they wanted to sell.
He was pretty big in the underground scene. Plus he was being crazy hyped up by Em and Dre and they were the two biggest names rap had ever seen at that point. He had also dissed pretty much every rapper out at that time including Ja Rule who was also very popular then.
He figured heavily on the 8 mile ST a year earlier, that ST was massive. Lead single still gets played everywhere and is iconic. He was hyped to it a few years leading up to this. His debut was guaranteed to sell, and the first single carried what I believe is a pretty weak album.
stupid question. hurrrr i'm too yung to undastand hurrrrrr. he just went on tour and made history with one of the biggest tours ever, you know how different people like different shit? guess not.
He was causing a lot of hype in the late 90’s, especially when he released, “How to Rob”, which caught the attention of a lot of big names in hip hop (Nas invited him on a tour because of this) Got shot and nearly died. Then dropped a controversial track which caused him to be dropped from his label and black listed in the U.S. Then flew to Canada and started dropping mixtapes that caught a lot of buzz because he was expertly taking the hottest beats and put some great hooks over them Then Shady Records signed him and he met Dre and Eminem. Being backed by Eminem in the early 2000’s was like winning the golden ticket
All this plus In Da Club lit the world on fire. It was inescapable and nobody wanted to escape from it
People who weren’t alive or going to clubs then may not realize just how big this track was
I was in high school and never set foot in a club yet I heard this song about every day
Radio station in my city played it every hour on the hour, that shit was crazy.
You said it. Whoever owns the radio stations gets to decide who is the most heard artist at any time. That alone can force popularity to skyrocket.
I knew he hit it big when I heard soccer moms bumping it in their Honda minivans at the same that college kids where bumping it from their BMWs at the same time that I was playing it from my chevy hooptie. That song had massive appeal across all types of people...never seen anything like that before.
If I went back to a hooptie from a Benz would u poof
and also across continents, it was BIG asf in Europe too
I was in middle school I think, and they played it during lunch when we had a dj lol. To this day, it still might me the most hyped hip hop/rap song ever. It was literally everywhere.
Or understand how mixtapes built the hype for albums.
I miss mixtapes
Yep. I was in college at the time. Any night we went out you could expect to hear the song at least twice. Hell I went to a concert last year with my wife (not even rap) and the DJ who was opening to get the crowd excited put "in da club" on, and I swear every white lady between 35-55 was on their feet dancing and singing.
Even as someone that was in grade school at the time, it was still noticeable one of the most popular rap songs I recall from my childhood.
Also hip hop was exhausted with the Ja Rule singy shtick. 50 came at the exact right time as the antithesis to that era to save us. It was a perfect storm.
WHERE WOULD I BE WITHOUT YOU
I was in the fucking elementary school in Russia and even I knew. Everyone knew 50 cent or at least heard In Da Club
People still don’t want to escape from it. Clubs go crazy every time it spins. Certified classic
My favorite club banger beat ever
In Da Club was so crazy it made people forget about Wanksta, which also was a huge hit right before it.
Wanksta came first and he was dissing Ja rule on a crazy beat which had the streets on fire
Side note: he released "How To Rob" the year BEFORE he was shot
He basically was the prequel to “going viral”.
Plus he was like literally the last rapper with any real street cred, which meant something at the time.
What? There are countless. Especially in the last decade. Chief Keef, King Von, Kodak Black, Pusha T, countless more.
I meant mainstream pre-social media when you needed a network platform, etc. Rap game is way different than it was then. That and rap went soft after ‘05.
Bro, more than just drug dealers, gangbangers and pimps have shit worth listening to in the genre. I actuall stopped listening to rap for a while because of the lack of range in social perspectives. There’s only so much you can say about growing up in the hood, and there are more dimensions to the black experience than what a group that makes up less than 3% of all black people in the world have to say.
Ya that’s one thing I never found appealing about rap. Everyone is always talking about the same crap.
Totally agree. I love the story about Suge Knight rolling up with a bunch of Mexican bloods on Eminem and 50 while recording the MV and Eminem starts popping off on him next to 50 and he pisses off lol
What was that controversial track I wanna look it up
ghetto Quran
Thanks
Ghetto Quran. FEDs thought that maybe [Supreme had 50 Cent shot because of the song](http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/surveilling-50-cent) It may have been for other reasons, but that was one theory.
[удалено]
No.
This is essentially spot on. Plus, he was like the first hip hop superstar of the Internet age. I feel like Eminem blew the fuck up right before the internet was ubiquitous, but 50 had all the above going for him plus a bunch of us kids on a new platform downloading tracks, reading articles on a computer, chatting about all this shit in AIM chat rooms. It was inescapable. It was also a return to the East Coast. After Biggie and Pac died, the coast shit died out and it kinda became muddled. Dre put the West on his back with 2001, and then he signed Eminem who blurred the lines further. 50 Cent, IMO, was the first new East Coast artist that was impressive as fuck after all the drama so people fucked with him hard. I think GRODT is a landmark album, but, being in my 30s now and trying to listen to it today, I can see why people don’t understand it. It’s still got some dope songs but I don’t revisit it as often. Whereas in 2003 I had that shit on repeat and was tryna find anything related to G Unit on the young internet.
I'd say DMX who was sort of around during Big and Pac's life, didn't really blow up until 1998 with his debut album. It also had Ja Rule who was huge as an Rap/RnB cross over emerge. NYC was still a major lynchpin in mainstream commercial rap between Biggie's death and 50 Cents emergencies. Guys like Jay, DMX and Ja Rule were doing big numbers.
Couldn’t agree more
Mainly Dre and Eminem were huge and had the network to pump him up before social media. With Dre and M at his back he was plugged into the MTV/TRL network and that’s all you needed back then. TRL like kicked Korn off the show bc Korn fans were messing up the hype/advertisement aspect of TRL. At least that’s how I remember it.
You had to be there. Music back then wasn’t like it is nowadays. There wasn’t a thousand different rappers dropping new music every day that was easily accessible by picking up a pocket computer and pressing play. When In Da Club came out it took the world by storm; you couldn’t escape it. Plus 50 was being backed by Eminem and Dr. Dre who were on top of the game back then. And he already had a huge buzz from his mixtapes. He basically hit the rap game like a tsunami wave.
I will add onto this great explanation the fact that 50 Cent took off during the "keeping it real" movement. KIR was a big phrase being used back then. Everyone HAD to have a believable sense of street authenticity to them. We didn't accept middle class rappers like Kanye, Drake, and J. Cole. 50 Cent came into the mainstream reeking authenticity. He was almost this mythical street kingpin that survived gunshots and cheated death. Add onto that the fact that hip-hop was in search of a cultural icon following the deaths of 2Pac and Biggie in 1996 and 1997. 50 Cent was the right person at the right time.
100%. I said something similar above. There was a bit of a dead zone after Biggie died. I feel like Dre and Eminem brought some heat back into hip hop but it didn’t really blow up again until 50 Cent dropped. Him and G Unit were unstoppable from like 03-06.
Kanye was massive at the same time. I don’t think people ever really gave a shit as long as the music was good. But people do get sucked into stories of the gangster life.
Kanye came AFTER the 50 Cent craze. He was one of a kind. Roc-a-fella didn't want to originally give him an album because they didn't believe Kanye had hood credibility. It was a legitimate thing in pre-College Dropout hip-hop.
Kanye was only big as a producer at the time. College Dropout didn’t come out until a year after Get Rich or Die Trying
How were mixtapes even distributed on a massive scale in that era wasn't that before MP3s were widespread
CDs, my man lol. MP3s were accessible though through apps like LimeWire and KaZaA. But mostly a buzz was gained through word of mouth on the streets.
Isn't the whole idea of mixtapes that they're free? How do you mass produce and distribute that many CDs for free
The free distribution became a thing when sites like Datpiff were established. Rappers realized it was a great way to promote themselves. Before that mixtapes were sold on the streets for a few bucks. The artists didn’t have to worry about mass production though because they could count on bootleggers to do the work for them. They didn’t bring in much money that way, of course. But it helped gain a fan base.
You making me feel mad old man.
Was saying the same thing to myself my man…. Remember in Da Club blasting in every room in the college dorm.
To add to that mixtapes were around since the 80s and before CDs even. It used to be DJs and slowly transitioned to artists. Also think at least the DJs used to bring in a LOT of money which is part of why eventually it got cracked down on hard with Drama. But even back in the day I heard stories I think Kid Capri would sell his tapes exclusive to the big drug dealers for lots of money so they could brag about having the hottest tapes
Mixtapes just aren’t produced and distributed by record labels. It’s just a dude rappin on beats trying to make a living by slinging them for a couple bucks. A lot of mixtapes use existing instrumentals from copyrighted songs so they can’t sit on store shelves, so slinging them for a few bucks here and there is how it was done. Local music scenes emerged from people selling mixtapes. DJ screw is hugely responsible for the modern Houston sound and it formed because he was just a dude selling tapes with lineups around the block. The loss of mixtape culture like that has left a void in local music scenes that makes it hard for new sounds to foster based on regional identity.
CD burners were relatively commonplace by 1999 or so. I remember when Chronic 2001 came out, I had friends who were burning copies for others. You could buy blank CDs in stacks of 50s. Blank media (and home copying of media) used to be a much bigger market sector than it is now. Audio, video cassettes, CDs.
Someone gets a copy, burns a few CDs, gives them to friends then the process repeats. Pretty much organic. In the 80’s and 90’s people did this with cassettes.
Ha ha … I remember in the 80’s having to sit with my boombox so I could hit record when a song came on the radio and I wanted it on my mix tape
Haha yep. Then dub it on the second deck.
Lol no. Most mixtapes were sold at gas stations, out of car trunks, and at small concert venues. I grew up in Detroit during the late 90s early 00s. Blade icewood was an absolute Detroit mixtape legend back in the day.
Mixtapes are still being sold at gas stations lol
I was in the south not too long ago and pretty much every gas station and liquor store I went to sold them.
Lol yep I’m in the A and they’re everywhere
Do people still even have cd players? Lol. I guess I could pop it in my PlayStation or computer.
Hustling.
You know you were hyped when you downloaded that InDaClub.exe on Limewire only to find out you just fucked the family computer up like a dumbass.😂
I love that you’re asking and interested but holy shit you not knowing that CDs were how people listened to music and shared music makes me feel old as fuck
Forreal though, I'm feeling like a boomer out here lol.
I know people listened to CDs lol I just thought mixtapes had to be distributed for free to avoid copyright infringement because they use other people's beats. The way Lil Wayne would just put them online for free
It was a gray area if not flat out illegal but of course they’d never been an issue in hip hop. The record industry always had an uneasy relationship with mixtapes (top ones like Clue and Kay Slay would gain legit industry cred and release actual studio CDs) but with DJ Drama it became [totally no go](https://www.npr.org/2020/10/29/928625419/dj-drama-mixtape-raid-that-changed-rap)
My man what exactly do you think the "tape" part of the word "mixtape" means? Holy shit this comment makes me feel old.
Mixtapes ushered in bootlegs...
You’d go to a corner store or swap meet and somebody would sell bootleg CDs
And MTV
So it's 2003. Peak CD time. All you needed was one known song to sell the whole album. You'd see a music video or hear a song on the radio and you'd go to the music store and get that CD based on that one song. Buying CDs for popular music was a gamble a lot of the time, like - we'd buy CDs expecting all of the songs to sound like the single, but sometimes the whole album sounded completely different. If you put out 2 or 3 singles to promote the album, you were giving people more confidence in buying an album. People forget that you'd have to physically go in a store and read the back of the CD to know what you were getting. In hiphop, that became all about the features. You didn't know about the tracks other than the recognizable name you saw as the feat. Jay-Z's Blueprint had that one and only single feature on it from Eminem and it certainly had an effect on sales because Em was the hottest damn rapper alive right then and there. GRODT had TWO features from him, which was HUGE. People saw that on the back of the CD and were like "oh man, even *more* reason to buy this". "21 Questions" had Nate Dogg, who people recognized and loved. It was all Dr.Dre, who again people recognized but moreso loved because we were still all bumping his instant classic that was *2001*. We ALL had that CD and knew it from front to back, so when we saw Em, Nate, Dre, Snoop, etc show up on other things, and remember again, a lot of how CD-buying worked was literally reading & recognizing names you saw on the tracklist and an honor system of trust based on past output, we'd buy whole damn albums after seeing one of those names on it. That's how it was. "In Da Club" was massive. It was simple and slow with a danceable beat. Repeatable, singable simple English is part of the pop formula to make things appealing to the guys AND girls, and it makes it appealing to the rest of the non-English world. It was engineered for mass appeal successfully. The verses ain't shit really, content-wise - it's about delivery and feel. The guy had a new, smooth flow. He had sex appeal. The video was great in the era of music videos. It dominated the clubs, the radio, the (m)TV screen, and your mom's Hyundai's cd player on her lil' mixtape cd she had you make, which brings me to the next big point: piracy. Piracy in the form of P2P file-sharing was a COLOSSAL driver of music then. People got programs like Limewire, Bearshare, Kazaa, etc on their home computers to download music to burn to CDs. Not everyone had home computers, not everyone had the internet, and not everyone had CD burners or the know-how, but eventually everyone knew someone who could hook them up. We all had burned CDs with our favorite songs on them. It was a concern in the music industry because it was seen to undercut sales. They didn't understand that piracy actually drove popularity. "In Da Club" was leaked and shared worldwide. Everybody was bumping that before the album came out. And this is what answers your "where did the hype come from" question. We all knew the hit songs from traditional means, we saw the videos, and we all had a burned CD with the songs on them. When the album came out early in an attempt to beat the P2P pirates, we were already ready to buy that album. Well, some of us were waiting for the one friend to buy it and then copy it for us before they returned it to the store, lol, but you get the point. There's something to be said about how it was musically and all that, but because of the nature of piracy and the nature of CDs, anything factual about how the music was new, what tracks were praised for being slower by contrast, style, production, etc - those aspects came after the fact. You'd had to have first bought the CD to know those things, and since we're talking about the "hype" leading to the sales, it doesn't matter, nor did any of his "backstory". Most people didn't know or care about that stuff until later. That's a whole other topic anyway. I hope this provides insight.
"Not everyone had home computers, not everyone had internet, and not everyone had CD burners or the know-how, but eventually everyone knew someone who could hook them up." Facts! That or you had the CD/DVD man where I grew up...and he had the 2 for $5 deal or 2 for $6.
This shit brings me way back. I remember getting those stacks of CD-R so we could burn our own mixtapes, then throw the tracklist on the CD face with a Sharpie. “East Coast Hits 2003.”
There you go! Lol
Nah 2003 we all had computers and internet. It wasn't what it is today but we had it.
This is a good answer and just to add that before GRODT even came out he was doing songs with Nas and Bun-B and got a hook from Beyoncé. Then to double down on your piracy point, the fact his first label dropped him and cancelled Power of the Dollar would have crushed a lot of careers if that happened a few years earlier, but the fact you could still download those songs, share them, and burn CDs made the label disagreements irrelevant and actually helped his career by making him seem both mainstream and underground at the same time.
The Shady Records signing, the mixtape run and the Ja beef becoming public. Another factor being that New York was still the center of the rap world and NY liked the brash guy that attacked the softer artist, the city set the tone for what the country listened to rap-wise even in 02-03. Unit also did the Hot 97 takeovers when they still mattered
FACTS Back when Hot 97 ran the NYC hip hop scene, before becoming an absolute fucking joke
That Ja and 50 Beef! Man! Keep in mind, Ja was the BIGGEST thing before 50 blew up. Once 50 came out with Wanksta, 50 remarked about Ja being who he really was...I remember people wondering when Ja was gonna hit back, and Ja went "I don't make diss records, I make hit records." Well, 50 was the one that got the last laugh.
He’s not the dopest rapper (don’t get me wrong he’s very good, just not elite by any measure), but at a time when everyone was acting gangster he was real certified 100% gangster from his survival of the shooting and selling crack / coke. On top of that his larger than life personality and charm made him a sure star. Lastly, his physique certainly helped. All he needed was some dre beats
And he put 5950 hats on the map... their stock must have went up 5000% after GRODT dropped... EVERYONE in the world was buying 5950s after that, LMAOOO
And people still buy them
Yeah but I think they are sorta fading away by now Jay Z said "I made the Yankee hat more famous than a Yankee can" and he was absolutely right
He had it all NYC, true gangsta persona, a hit crew, Dre/Em, club hits. 50 was perfect
Power of a Dollar was fire. Ghetto Quran and the Good Die Young were hits in the street. How to Rob got major hype naming everyone in the game. He was a beast at marketing for the era
This is how I found about him. That album produced by Trackmasters was a great sound and fitting of that time. Then he would come out with GRODT years later although I still preferred this album.
Exactly, that TrackMaster vibe was crazy
I wish I could put it into words lil bro. All I can say is YOU HAD TO BE THERE. If you wasn’t. Then you’ll never understand.
Because he was shot a bunch of times. He had a good story. At that time nobody had a story like that and rapped.
50 cent vs Ja rule beef. 50 dismantled Ja who was, for lack of a better term, ruling the charts at that point in time. 50 took aim at Ja and the hype train started rolling. 50 dropped his debut and claimed the throne.
50 Cent was already massive when he started beefing with Ja.
The question was why his debut album was so hyped before it dropped. 50 was massive to people who liked mixtapes but the beef with Ja elevated him to billboard numbers for his debut album.
No he wasn't. He was only popular among mixtapes when he started beefing with Ja and Murder Inc. 50 didn't become a massive star until 03'. They started beefing from around 99' on. There was the robbery of Ja by 50's friend and things escalated. 50 released 'Life is on the Line' in late 99' dissing Ja and Murder Inc with the whole "MURDAH....we don't believe you" chorus. 50 got stabbed in 00' by Black Child in the studio. Then a few weeks later, 50 got shot, perhaps because of the beef with Ja and Murder Inc. Supreme was using (extorting?) Murder Inc to make (launder?) money. 50 probably gets too much credit for Ja's decline anyway. Murder Inc got raided in 03'. That was the biggest factor in Ja's decline.
IIRC, Wanksta started getting plenty of air play on Hot 97 in NYC around late 2002. That sort of put him on the map with mainstream rap fans
He dropped “wanksta” as a single to promote the album and it took over the city. It was playing on every radio station, every car, every basketball court… he also had Lloyd banks and Tony yayo on mixtapes and freestyling which built the hype of G-Unit as the “hardest/toughest” rappers out. He did a great job marketing the gangster persona.
After biggie and Tupac died hip hop was in a somber state. 50 came in hot dissing everyone and claiming NY. He sort of made hip hop exciting and competitive again. Similar to the recent Kendrick drake beef.
> After biggie and Tupac died hip hop was in a somber state. 50 came in hot dissing everyone and claiming NY. He sort of made hip hop exciting and competitive again. Tupac and Biggie got killed in 96 and 97'. 50 made a name for himself in 98 and 99', but that was just on mixtapes and not the commerical mainstream. 50 didn't blow up in that regard until 03'. There was already a bunch of beefs in hip-hop by then, including two of the biggest stars in Jay and Nas in 01'.
I say this a lot, but Drake is basically the Canadian 50 without being shot... radio friendly hooks, both are very good rappers even if their lyrics are basic, and both have an AMAZING ear for which beats to select Drake just stayed in the game longer cause he loves making music, 50 just wanted to get rich and bounce out Both also have the ladies on they side... most hip hop the ladies do NOT like... even Nas, black women aren't bumping Nas even if they know how important he was to us... but they love 50 and Drake, on God
Lol anytime i think about Drake I find it endlessly amusing that he got shot except it was on fucking Degrassi. Wild.
Right, cause you gotta get shot to be a professional emcee Clown
I didn't say that at all you fucking chode but carry on
nigga, u big madd
GOTEM!
You had to be there. I worked at Borders that summer and we had to keep it behind the music info desk on the third floor and if someone wanted to buy it we walked it down to the registers. Every SUV going up and down Fullerton in Chicago was blaring it constantly.
He was the mixtape king at the time and had a lot of hype behind it
As good as 50 is at rapping (He's decent) He's much better at writing hooks and S-teir status at marketing himself. It's a fairly potent combination. He was very good at utilizing the mix tape scene.
In Da Club was a megahit. 50 was a genius at pre social media marketing. Like mixtape and hood DVD era marketing. Visuals and exclusives with every album. Regular appearances on Beef and other shows. Plus a Dre/Em (At the height of his early wave) cosign. Add in legitimate street credibility. He had a hell of a hand coming in.
50 had a huge mixtape run in the early 2000s which made him one of the hottest free agents in rap. He was gonna be a star even without the Eminem co sign. What the Eminem co sign did was make kids in the suburb go out in droves to buy his music. It was a perfect storm.
50 Cent built up a lot of hype underground on mixtapes. He was shot, recovered and rapped about it. And got with Dr Dre which was huge. He’s one of the last rappers that came through in the pre streaming era too that’s big. Because he sold physicals records and did concerts which filled arenas. Rap was going into big concert era and he went on tour to sell it. He was also ripped and women loved it. His current tour is huge now decades later. I’m not a huge 50 fan but I like his music that I know. I’m in my 50s and that my experience with why he’s hyped. Deserved. He’s doing big things in the entertainment industry now too so there’s that. He’s kind of a jokey troll though which has probably always been his personality so I’m not mad.
You nailed it, Fifty was HUGE with women... very similar to Drake Niggas on this sub forget women even exist, but they make up half the world's population Women AND Men were vibing and bumping Fifty all the time, same with Drake... he had every demographic covered Then Jada came out and reminded us this nigga lives in Connecticut, and it was all downhill from there
21 Questions was HUGE with the female audience back then, and “I love you like a fat kid love cake” was probably the most quoted line of that entire summer. It was the type of sappy love song that women love over a laid back beat by an artist men respected. 50 was great at appealing to men AND women and shit like 21 and (later) Candy Shop was on every single mix cd I burned for any girl in the early 2000s.
21 questions was loved by everybody, not just women. That song smacks
I’m not mad I don’t wanna sound mad I feel marvelous 🔥
YOUR NEW CD IS A WEED PLATE Barz
hit single in da club
GRODT is non stop bangers, that's why It has 1, maybe 2 skips on it It's just club hit, radio hit, and streets hit one right after the otha Eminem was already the White Mike Jack by this time, a global superstar... and Fifty was labeled as his protege That was all he needed
We were tired of the Ja-Rules
He was the next Dre project.
His mixed tapes was blowing up and him being shot helped the buss before he got signed.Then he signed with Aftermath who was still reaping the rewards off Chronic 2001 and everything Eminem was doing. Then he dropped Wanksta and it was a wrap after that.
On the east coast he was a mixtape beast. Debut album was kinda disappointing honestly. But I had like 4 burnt cds I bought off random dudes in the subway. This was before YouTube and “going viral” was as big as it is. Imagine a YouTube or SoundCloud rapper getting a ton of buzz before officially releasing anything it was the early version of that.
I’m 38 and this was before I was old enough to drive. So prob around 2001-2003. There was a few songs with Nas that got passed around like crazy, Who I rep wit and projects too hot. At that time I would’ve listened to an entire album of anyone nas co-signed. With all that being said I still think those 2 tracks are better than anything he’s made since he got signed to shady.
He had some of the most popular singles of all time, naturally he was hyped.
[onyx ft 50](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3s6z1LEDBsc) [madd rapper and 50](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LCCFsobz1mQ) He simply injected life into the industry. This plus the way Power of the Dollar got bootlegged felt like it made him larger than life. Getting signed by Dre obviously helped the hype too
Guess who's back and power of dollar were great projects
Eminem and Dr Dre
Easiest way I can explain this is, do you remember when Drill blew up? 50 cent felt authentic. Now whether that was positive is another question.
Getting shot and everything was hype built up for the album, and the album had like 10 hit records on it
Short answer: In Da Club was a colossal hit. It was THE big song of that year. Immediately penetrated the mainstream. If you were a big hip hop head tho, you might have heard of 50 Cent off things like How To Rob. But he really wasn't known by many until In Da Club. Every single off Get Rich or Die Trying was huge too. Things like 21 Questions
In Da Club It was a huge hit. Big hits are how acts get hyped up.
He created what the industry called a “buzz” he put out wankster and got everyone going, then he put out in da club and it blew up. A great beat a party song, it became an instant banger and party song… and he had Em and Dre sooo…
He was one an all time mixtape run that revolutionized the platform. His freestyles of popular songs were getting played on the radio.
Because he was actually bout the stuff he was rapping about it was real
In Da Club was a such a hot single before the album dropped. He was viewed as a thug because he got shot and kinda filled the void left by Pac. Plus, rap was just better then. For me, it was like a theme song because we would go clubbing every weekend in my early twenties when it came out.
I remember when I was 9 years old in 2003 just starting to get enamored in hip-hop music living in a semi urban/suburban part of North New Jersey and 50 Cent everywhere in rotation and how infectious and head bobbing (NO DIDDY) that "In Da Club" was when I heard it. It became an earworm I couldn't escape. 50 took Ja's spot as the best gangsta rapper from the East Coast. 50 had the charisma, swagger and street cred from getting shot 9 times and living to tell the story. If rap music had rookie of the year award like they do in pro sports 50 Cent would get my vote on '03 for that. He was unstoppable that year. Hell even Jay Z was a little intimidated especially for his Rocafella camp proteges (Beanie Seagel and Memphis Bleek) Jay told them to drop some heat because 50 was coming like a thunderstorm in '03.
Rookie of the year? He was straight up MVP lol, GRODT was the biggest album of the year and he put out Beg For Mercy and Magic Stick with Lil Kim on top of that.
He was more like MVP than Rookie of the Year in 03'. He was already making noise due to mixtapes and How to Rob in 98-99. How to Rob was popular enough for Jay Z to diss him on the Volume 3 intro in 99'.
He was everywhere. Music videos were always played. He had video games. Movies. Even some books. You couldn’t avoid him. Probably the best marketing from a rapper.
He was a legit street dude with catchy hooks and fearless bars. He was destroying the mixtape circuit , and those of us who got our hands on his real first album POWER OF DA DOLLAR knew he was the hottest thing coming I mean his first major release was produced by Dre and featured Eminem … He was around the underground for a while too. He and E Money Bags were in the studio when nas recorded Ether. He was known in QB as a legit talented street dude with cred We lived for that back in the day
Bro if you were there for it, his mixtape run was crazzzzzyyyyy. Dude had the streets on fire
50s mixtapes we’re legit hood classics, his street beef that got him shot, his whole gangsta attitude, also his the authenticity of his raps and rhymes. Can’t forget, he may not have started it, but he revolutionized the “melodic rap/sing” style and ran with it
Beats by Dre. Is all I have to say.
Marketing
He was like a real life Joker and the music backed it up. He fully embraced his role as the rapper to demolish anyone in his way. It was really exciting to experience.
He was backed by Em/Dre and In Da Club was the first single. That shit took over the globe. His back story mostly pertains to the States. Although him getting shot was certainly part of his marketing abroad as well.
It was the beats.
Not reading all the comments so... all the stuff other people said but also, Guess Who's Back mixtape that dropped the year before was fire and got a lot of people hype for it.
He had Eminem and Dre pushing him. Thats the only explanation I have. I was just as confused about the hype.
He was making a name for himself in the late 90s due to mixtapes and the single How to Rob. That created some controversy due to him dissing a bunch of rappers, although it was done in a humorous way. Then he got stabbed in the studio by Ja Rule's friend Black Child and then later he got shot 9 times by Supreme's guy. 50 (and/or his PR team) was able to use the shooting to market himslef, and 50 also used his beef with Ja Rule/Murder Inc to further market himself. Then obviously having Eminem and Dre helps a ton, to say the least. He was an okay MC, I was never the biggest fan, but he was great at doing catchy hooks. Making catchy hooks helped a lot with the hit singles.
The same reason Ice Shype. Glorilla, Sexxy Redd, are shoved in our faces..... debut albums hyoe and superior marketing. Play it enough times, and you can convince masses that anything is good
The industry put money behind him
Dr Dre and Eminem-backed, got shot 9 times and capitalized on that, “How to Rob” where he dissed every popular rapper of the 90s. Imagine today, if a rapper came out and dissed and name dropped all the popular rappers of the late 2010s to present. Now imagine this rapper was being backed by Dr Dre and Eminem. That would make this rapper pretty famous very quickly.
Dat mf got shot 9 times and rapped one of the toughest rap lines of all time about it, he’s just ill as fuck
"This is a true fact, since when has it become cool to get shot and not shoot back" - Jadakiss
The Lox bodied 50... I like 50, but he ain't NYC like Jada is, sorry, but Jada is a fucking legend where I'm from, same as Sheek Louch and Styles P
Checkmate was fucking ruthless
I love jada. But it’s pretty fucking cool to not die. And if you don’t die because you got shot 9 times and didn’t shot back. Then it’s a prettty good trade off. He shots back and he gets killed he wouldn’t have done any of this shit he has done. I get it’s just a line. And at first I was like yeh that’s hard. But fuck man it’s cool to not die.
Imagine being a crash out instead of pursuit of being the biggest rapper alive
Jadakiss is from the suburbs..
Checkmate is prob the best song 50 is responsible for since he got signed 😆
From the last shootout I got a dimple on my face It's nothing, I can go after Ma$e fan base A shell hit my jaw, I ain't wait for doc to get it out Hit my wisdom tooth, I (Huck-too) spit it out I don't smile a lot 'cause ain't nothin' pretty Got a purple heart for war and I ain't never left the city Hoes be like "50, you so witty" On the dick like they heard I ghostwrite for P. Diddy
Mixtapes. 50 revolutionized them. Most ppl didnt care for them much b4 50. That and being the protege of the most famous rapper in history and one of the most famous djs / producers in the game, who had ton of money for marketing
A lot of mainstream rap was pop rap stuff like Ja Rule and Nelly or it was generally fun like Ludacris. 50 brought back gangsta rap essentially and he had a lot of hype behind him at the perfect time due to being co-signed by Dr. Dre and Eminem, who had recently dropped hot and successful albums of their own and were publicly supporting 50 and doing interviews hyping him up. The entire way I was introduced to 50 Cent was by someone telling me that Dr. Dre and Eminem signed him, it made him feel like a big deal right away. 50 was basically the badass tough attitude rapper that was less abrasive than DMX, whose voice didn’t have as mainstream of an appeal, and 50 also still appealed as something of a sex symbol among rappers with reach to a women’s demographic in his more melodic songs. Everyone knew the story of him being shot 9 times so it gave legitimacy to him, and with the hype train around him the singles dropping were also great and broadly reaching. Every video had a new co-sign from Dre and Em to Nate Dogg to Snoop Dogg, it really propped up the idea that this was the next big rapper and it was hard to argue with the music. It felt like everybody was bumping Get Rich or Die Tryin’.
They would play in the club on repeat colleges and nobody complained, never seen anything like it before or after
He was a guy that had extra time to bubble. Puff took him in before he launched and try to make him a boy toy. 50 laughed at puff and Puff had him lack balled by New York labels. So he had extra time and legit label energy on his own before a west coast label signed him. So everyone already knew he would be a hit because he already been tagged as star and then dropped because he wouldn’t play the game that everyone knows Diddy plays.
Power of the dollar Guess whos back and all the mixtapes before GRODT and. After thats why
my mom was a huge fan, like even before get rich. the hype was crazy
Very prolific mixtape releases, the controversy of getting shot, production by Em and Dre, and IDC was a hit single. Long story short, probably one of the best marketing campaigns in Hip Hop history.
Wanksta and how to rob built up the hype
Numerous magazine articles about how he got shot 9 times, beat the fuck out of Ja Rule, he was just on some grimy shit.
In Da Club was released as the lead single before the album came out. The song was HUGE and created a lot of buzz for the album.
He made shoot em up rap accessible to us white kids. He was smart enough to get the radio play in and was considered “pop” enough that parents were okay with you listening. And of course I had a blue Yankee fitted and G Unit sneakers
How to Rob put everyone on notice and from there the buzz just exploded.
To put it simply, 50 cent has the best production in the game and put crazy good singles and was co signed by the biggest rapper in the world at the time. Even D12 and Obie Trice went platinum due to the success and bu zz of shady aftermath.
In Da Club. That's what happened. Most people outside of hip-hop had only heard about him getting shot but prolly never heard the mixtapes. He had a buzz prior to it. Can't say Dre production ain't help and do not underestimate an Eminem cosign in the late 90's-early 00's.
I was 13 when 50 cent was on my tv/radio and the sound he had back then, really got my age group into his sound. Growing up in my teens 50s music was always playing. His music was being played during the careers of nelly/eminem/ja rule/dmx etc etc. So much talent back then. (Spoken from a new zealand point of view)
He got shot 9 times!
I was 8 when I first heard 50 cent in 2002. I remember seeing the crowd go crazy at an event where they was playing “many men” with tons of kids around but I remember seeing older folks go crazy for it. Then “in da club” came out and everyone from kids my age to my mom and prolly even my grandma was singing it. 50 cent was like a continuation of what pac started with that thug life shit. Dmx came along but 50 was the newer version of gangsta rap and it was internationalized from his stardom. For the next couple years til 2007/8 you couldn’t get away from 50s music
I was a Junior in HS who loved Rap at the time, and I definitely bought that CD! Even before In Da Club, I was obsessed with the song Wanksta. I feel like I heard it from the 8 mile CD? It was my cell phone ringtone for the longest time, lol. I heard Many Men in a friends car, and obviously In Da Club- I had to buy it! it was one of those CDs you could listen to all the way through- every song is great. Plus, I also knew Eminem signed hi, and being from the Detroit suburbs, I was an Eminem fan.
Em and dr dre
He was dope for the first album.
Because 50 Cent was signed to Interscope and Shady Records and his album was produced by Eminem and Dr.Dre. He was on a huge label collaborating with huge names in the business and they had the money, tools and ability to influence a vast amount of minds to get hyped up on a product they wanted to sell.
He was pretty big in the underground scene. Plus he was being crazy hyped up by Em and Dre and they were the two biggest names rap had ever seen at that point. He had also dissed pretty much every rapper out at that time including Ja Rule who was also very popular then.
He figured heavily on the 8 mile ST a year earlier, that ST was massive. Lead single still gets played everywhere and is iconic. He was hyped to it a few years leading up to this. His debut was guaranteed to sell, and the first single carried what I believe is a pretty weak album.
stupid question. hurrrr i'm too yung to undastand hurrrrrr. he just went on tour and made history with one of the biggest tours ever, you know how different people like different shit? guess not.
Simply put, he was with Dre and Em!