50 Cent

You already know the bio: Long before the Glaceau Vitamin Water partnership, before the Reebok G Unit sneaker deal, before the video games, the albums, the mix CDs... even way before he got shot, 50 Cent wasn't "50 Cent." Born Curtis Jackson, 1975. Raised by a single mom in Jamaica, Queens, who got murdered when he was eight. Adopted his nickname after hearing about the exploits of a Brooklyn street legend named Kelvin "50 Cent" Martin. Caught a few cases before he was 18. Six months in a prison boot camp. Got out, dabbled with emceein', linked with Jam Master Jay, and eventually made his way to a connection with production team the Trackmasters and Columbia Records, where he recorded "Power Of The Dollar." And then he got shot. Nine times, point blank: hip, hand, arm, legs, chest, and face. Read that again: He got shot in the face. If post-gangsta rap has made it a prerequisite to have lived a little some-some of the street life you write songs about, then working the corners at the age of 12 and catching a string of gun and drug cases before you're 18 should bump you past Intro 101, right on up to a sophomore class. But getting shot? In the face?! Live through that, and you shouldn't be wasting your time with registration you should be teaching the class. And though 50 Cent might not exactly be professor material, aspiring students of emceein' and mogulizing alike can get a PhD's worth of education by studying not so much how he survived nine 9-millimeter slugs, but how he transmogrified all the trauma that comes with the territory mixing equal parts street smarts, business acumen, and Robert Greene's 48 Laws Of Power into one of the most talked-about success stories in Hip Hop. Call it 50 Cent's Three-Step Master Class On How To Change The Game.