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Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson was a former crack dealer from New York turned rapper who scored
immediately with
Power of the Dollar (1999), a catchy product for the masses produced by "Trackmasters" (i.e. the duo of Jean-Claude "Poke" Olivier and Samuel "Tone" Barnes).
After a couple of assassination attempts, Jackson was rediscovered by Eminem
and rapidly became a rap superstar: Get Rich or Die Tryin' (2003), the album with In da Club, offered a crossover of gangsta rap into pop music. The album remained for years the best-selling gangsta rap album.
Thanks to that album, hip-hop music moved into the mainstream and became to dominate the sales charts.
Its influence on the
New York scene was enormous because 50 Cent's style de facto replaced the classic "boom-bap" sound of New York and for a long time the New York scene would remain a relatively derivative one, even a caricature of its "gansta" style of the 1990s.
The Massacre (2005) reinforced that position of stardom.
There was, however, very little content on
Curtis (2007) and
Before I Self Destruct (2009).
50 Cent was again influential in shaping the decline of the New York scene:
when in 2007
Kanye West's album Graduation outsold 50 Cent's Curtis
in its first week, it heralded the dawn of a new age of hip-hop music, no longer
ruled from New York.
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