50 Cent Teaches How To Make Money (In The Music Industry and Beyond)
#1 Adversity Is The Best Teacher
“I’ve somehow ended up in the circumstances where I’ve been up against the toughest things in the environment I come out of before any of the success takes place. I always say if there was someone to run and go get I would’ve ran and got them, but I have to run and get me. So, I had to come back myself every time, so it just makes me not look at what would be the bigger situations in front of me, the harder circumstances don’t seem so rough to me no more. Because I’ve already been up against the toughest things, the biggest obstacles.” (:24–1:02)
50 Cent looks back on his adversity as a positive thing.
As someone who came from extremely adverse situations, he is someone who looks at them as lessons rather than setbacks.
If we look at what Curtis had to go through, it only confirms what he quotes.
In 2000, when he was only 25-years-old, he was shot nine times outside his grandmother’s house in Queens.
Soon after that he was blacklisted by the industry for his controversial song: Ghetto Qu’ran and was forced to move to Canada to continue his music.
We’re all going to have a different set of circumstances, and we’re all going to face adversity, but it’s not about what kind of adversity you face, it’s about how you react to that adversity.
Keep On Getting Better No Matter What
50 Cent continually got better at his craft in spite of his adversity and allowed the adversity to shape who he was as a man and artist.
50 Cent had way more obstacles in his journey compared to rappers like Kanye West or Chance the Rapper, who both were raised middle-class in Chicago and were exposed to music earlier and had more opportunities available, but he was able to use the adversity he faced and allow it to influence his style.
Part of his appeal became his credibility as a street rapper and his street lifestyle. 50 Cent knew that in the rap industry, though, it didn’t matter how much street credibility you had; to be successful in the rap industry meant continually improving at the craft.
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But with that said, let’s hear 50 break things down even more in-depth.
#2 Learn What It Takes to Be Successful in YOUR Industry
“If almost 90% of the time I’m communicating with people who have achieved a higher level of education than me. Right? They’re college graduates, things like that. But what I hold on to is: they wouldn’t have made it under the circumstances I came up under. You know, if the information that you needed for business classes was in the book, if everything you needed was in the book, then the teacher would be too successful to teach the class. Their students usually don’t go off to be the head of the field they studied in. If you look at it, you know, a lot of the C students and people that can not only retain the information long enough to pass midterms, but internalise some of the information and behaviours, they turn out to be more successful than the people that easily pass the class.” (1:12–2:06)
50 Cent is street smart.
He understands that there is no formula for success through the book, or a specific laid out path, and, if there was, the teacher would be too busy to teach it.
Think about it, from 1999 to 2002 when 50 Cent was on the come up trying to make a name for himself, what did he do?
He did the set of actions that selected for rap artists back in the day, he beefed with other rappers and rapped controversial lyrics often because that was what you had to do at that time.
There was no book on how to make it in the rap game, nor was there the ability to make music in a bedroom and upload it to Soundcloud or Spotify in a few days.
In 2000, 50 Cent took advantage of the technology of his era by taking all of the hottest beats on the mixtape circuit and flipping them with better hooks, which put his music in the mixtape circuit where mixtape DJ’s were messing with him.
School Versus No School
50 Cent never had a great education.
He was arrested for selling drugs in high school and managed to scrape to his GED in a shock incarceration boot camp.
50 Cent believes that people get good at school, meaning they know how to succeed at school, but that just means they can do school well, not thrive in the real world.
Let’s examine a handful of rappers who decided to go to college and what that did for them.
J. Cole, Saweetie, Young MC, Megan Thee Stallion, and Childish Gambino.
How many of these rappers majored in music or writing, effectively utilising their degree?
Their degrees were: Communications, Communications and Journalism, Economics, Health Administration, and Dramatic Writing.
The only rapper whom you could say utilised their degree to catapult their success was Childish Gambino, who used his NYU degree to land himself a writing job for NBC’s hit sitcom 30 Rock, which was a stepping stone for his rap career.
J. Cole graduated with a 4.2 but only saw success after producing a mixtape that caught Hov’s attention.
Saweetie chose to transfer to USC instead of jumping into music full-time and only went into music full-time when her professor convinced her to do so.
While all of these rappers were influenced by their time at University, that was not what ultimately led them to be successful. All of them had realised at one point or another that they had to do the set of actions that it takes for a rapper to be successful.
#3 Don’t care about what other people think.
“Some people, they have the trait of: like say the person’s across the street, they look at you, they don’t like you from across the street. Some people feel the need to go across the street to say: Why I’m a good person? I don’t give a f**k. I genuinely don’t give a f**k about how these people think about me across the street because they don’t care about me. Is it okay for me to not care about people that don’t care about me? I mean, like the simple things, like if you look and you go: it would be entertaining for them to see me in crises. So if you saw that and you go: why would you care about a person who would like to see you under the worst circumstances you could be under?” (24:19–25:02)
Part of success for 50 Cent is having the right personality type.
He advises for people who want to be successful to have a more disagreeable personality type… to not care what other people think of you.
50 Cent has a more disagreeable personality type and that is what he is known for.
While this may have gotten him into trouble at times, and created public beef with rappers like Ja Rule, The Game, Lil Wayne, and Kanye West, and many others, it also gave him the drive and will to succeed in life.
It’s Okay To Be Selfish
50 Cent, while discovered and catapulted to success by none other than Eminem and Dr. Dre, is seen as a lone wolf of the rap industry.
He didn’t come up in a rap group like A$AP Mob, stay put in any of his label deals for too long, or rely on features for success.
While some may see that as selfish or disloyal, others see it as simply making business decisions. The type of person that 50 Cent advises you to be if you want to make money sees these things as making business decisions.
Tekashi 6ix9ine is an extreme example of this. By snitching on others, he saved himself from ultimate failure: life in prison.
While I reiterate that this is an extreme example, the example shows both consequences to being selfish.
Sometimes it can save your life, but it can also damage your reputation and label you as something that is very difficult to shake off. While 50 Cent is known for being a bad***, taking this too far has its consequences as well.
Conclusion:
With money in his name, 50 Cent knows a thing or two about making money.
With a long and lustrous career in music followed by a successful business career, 50 Cent today is worth forty million dollars.
For those of you looking to soak up the knowledge and advice of one of the rap industry’s best, three of his core pieces of advice for making money are: grow in spite of adversity, learn what it takes to be successful in your industry, and do not care about what other people think of you.
