50 Cent

Why he matters

Curtis Jackson was born in Queens and raised in South Jamaica. He started rapping in a friend’s basement, recording over instrumentals off turntables, and in 1996 a friend introduced him to Jam Master Jay of Run-DMC, who was starting his own label. Jay taught him to count bars, write choruses and structure a song, and 50 has credited him with making his hooks better.

In 1999 Trackmasters signed him to Columbia. The single “How to Rob,” which he said he wrote during a half-hour car ride, listed famous rappers he’d stick up; it got a reaction out of a lot of them, and Nas brought him on tour. Then Columbia shelved his debut album, Power of the Dollar, and dropped him. Unable to get a U.S. studio to work with him, he went to Canada with partner Sha Money XL and recorded dozens of mixtape songs, taking the hottest beats of the moment and putting stronger hooks on them. Guess Who’s Back? came out on an independent in 2002, and a copy found its way to Eminem through 50’s attorney.

Eminem introduced him to Dr. Dre. Get Rich or Die Tryin’ came out in February 2003, with Dre and Eminem as executive producers, and debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. “In da Club,” built by Dre and Mike Elizondo on an off-beat rhythm, went to number one on the Hot 100. In our view, nobody on the coast ever made the case for the chorus as the main event more convincingly than this record.

What a working rapper can take from it

Learn the structure before you break it. Counting bars, placing a hook, building a song with a shape: 50 learned those from a working pro before he had a deal. If your songs ramble, get the skeleton right first. The verse-writing guide is a good place to tighten the bars between the hooks.

Out-hook the original. The mixtape strategy wasn’t new beats. It was familiar beats with better choruses than the ones they came with. When you rap over a popular instrumental, the hook is where you prove you belong on it. Spend more time there than on the verses.

Getting dropped isn’t the end of the release plan. Columbia shelved his album, and he kept putting music out anyway. Today that means you control the calendar; the single-release guide covers how to do it without a label behind you.