Get Rich or Die Tryin'

It was a new Term (Semester) and I was in Junior Secondary School class 3 on Saturday January 11, 2003 when a group Senior Secondary School Class 3 students walked into our dormitory with his rechargeable lamp with a tape play strolled into our dormitory with “In Da Club” boom out of the bass-less speakers. My roommates and I were at the corridor that was adjacent to the entrance gate enjoying a football game going on in the quadrangle between some of my classmates, whiling away the day before it was time for lunch. I heard a faint sound approaching the dormitory from outside and it was getting clear then I was able to pick up the “…go go shorty, its your birthday” and I was like “Okay, this is new. Not Jay Z, not JaRule, not Eminem, not Nas. Who the hell was this?” My far peripheral vision caught the group of 5 seniors with the Alpha in the middle leading the park holding the lamp, while 2 other seniors were both on his left and right. I kid you not they were walking in slow motion when I watched them come in while the song was picking up, it was fire. Due to the limited resources in boarding house, we had to go on a mid-term break in mid February 2003 before it became clear to me that there was a new act in town, his name, 50 Cent, his style, Pure Bliss. “In Da Club” was the shit for a while over here in Nigeria. It was played everywhere, literally everywhere. Then the album was released in early February, didn’t get to give it a whole listen until the end of the Term (semester). The album changed everything in the rap genre with the way R&B was fused into Gangster rap and Hip Hop wowed a lot of people. The album came out guns blazing, breaking records and had all parties involved in its production smiling to the bank. It wasn’t 50 Cent’s first album, but it was his first for a major label, and it was flawless.

In 2003 when he was just 27-years-old, 50 Cent overcame a turbulent start to a career to become, undisputedly, the biggest rapper on the planet. That year, he released one of the most highly anticipated debut albums in Hip-Hop’s short history, Get Rich Or Die Tryin, and he shattered all expectations about its quality. The well-documented story goes that in May of 2000, he was shot 9 times outside his grandmother’s house, putting a pause on everything. His album Power Of The Dollar, which was supposed to be out a few days after the shooting, was instead put on the shelf by Columbia Records. Meanwhile, it was a wonder that 50 even survived the shooting, let alone be making music anytime soon. He used a walker to move around for 6 weeks and after 5 months, he was fully recovered. 1 of the bullets landed in the rapper’s left cheek, causing that famous slur that you’ve heard in his voice ever since. Less than a year after the shooting, he returned with a solo mixtape called Guess Who’s Back? which made its way to an impressed Eminem. So impressed in fact, that he flew 50 to LA and introduced him to Dr. Dre. The result was a $1 million deal which was followed by not 1, not 2, but 3 mixtapes with G-Unit. Just like that, he made a full U-turn of his situation and overcame insurmountable odds with his indomitable spirit. Those mixtapes and the Shady signing made Get Rich Or Die Tryin one of the most anxiously awaited albums of all time, let alone a debut.