‘I was more afraid of my mom than kids who roughed me up’: 50 Cent on using his childhood on screen
Curtis Jackson also goes by the name 50 Cent, but despite the moniker suggesting otherwise it seems the star doesn’t do things by halves.
When he put out his first album Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ it became the best-selling debut hip-hop record ever, while his TV show Power has been one of the most successful series on premium pay television in the US, according to network Starz.
It led to four spin-off series being commissioned and the latest, Power Book III: Raising Kanan, focuses on how Jackson’s character in Power, drug dealer Kanan Stark, became the man he did.
Curtis ’50 Cent’ Jackson starred in the original Power series, and now narrates a spin-off. Pic: Myles Aronowitz/Starz
Jackson tells Sky News he requested to the show’s creator Courtney A Kemp that he wanted to play “the worst character that they’ve seen on television – so if I play a bad guy, I want to play a real bad guy”.
But the prequel shows how he ended up that way, with Jackson narrating the story of Kanan’s younger years.
“To go into the prequel on his character is to show all of his trauma and all of the things that he – the things you go through make you who you are, I believe that – and the things that he went through and his experiences that hardened him to the point that he was that guy that we saw in Power at the beginning,” he says. “So you kind of see the things that he’s gone through that turned him into that.”
In order to give the character authenticity, Jackson borrowed from his own experiences growing up in the borough of Queens in New York City.
Mekai Curtis stars plays a young version of Jackson’s character Kanan in Power Book III: Raising Kanan. Pic: Nicole Rivelli/ Starz
One of the show’s opening scenes sees a young Kanan running home to his mother after being beaten up, but instead of comforting him she tells him he needs to learn to fight back and accompanies him for the rematch.
“These are real things, like, I really experienced being roughed up in the park before my mom sent me back to the park, and I was just more afraid of her than the kids in the park, so I ended up going back to fight them instead of dealing with my mom,” he says.
“And you deal with that and it kind of changes your perspective, like, I’m not going to go back whining to my mother for her to send me back, I’ll just handle it before she finds out that I’m scared or afraid of the other person, so it kind of changed a part of my character in the very early stages.
“It was probably the biggest thing to describe what my relationship with my mom was like fairly early on, you know, because she was the only provider, so she was like the source of everything that’s good; if she’s angry with you then nothing good is around, you know what I’m saying, and you’re like, wow, no, just take me back to the park, I’d rather fight than deal with this.”
Jackson narrates the story of Kanan’s upbringing. Pic: Myles Aronowitz/Starz
As a father himself now, Jackson recognises that idolising of parents by their children from the other side of the relationship.
“There’s a point where kids view their parents as superheroes because they don’t understand everything else in life that they have to do, work and everything else to create the comforts.
“My little guy now, he sees me like that, he thinks, ‘my dad could do it – there’s no question my dad could do it’, like if somebody can jump further and he’ll say ‘my dad can jump that far’, he thinks I can do everything, and it’s amazing.”
Jackson’s own mother passed away when he was eight, and he went on to be raised by grandparents. There, he was one of nine and there wasn’t a lot of money to go around, but his mother’s friends kept him in their lives; the star says it was them who inspired him to do whatever it took to make money.
“I look at my journey, some of the decisions that my mom made have guided mine, and it’s because people from her life had what was a representation of financial freedom, they had those nice things in front of me,” he says.
“They got everything that you would want, so it kind of led me down the same path of the hustling and going to do different things, and, you know, I just hit the roof of that and wanted to do more, so I got involved in music and entertainment where we do things that exceed that level of success, completely.
“Like, that [what his mum’s friends had] is the smallest thing, you know what I mean, it just felt big at that point, when I was little.”
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Jackson has returned to the studio to make new music for Raising Kanan. The tracks see him collaborating with up-and-coming artists – mirroring his own experiences of starting out in the music industry, when he worked with Eminem and Dr Dre – but now it’s Jackson who’s the experienced one boosting the profile of others.
The start of his career was strange to negotiate, he says. “My first album Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ was the largest debuting hip-hop album – still – 13 million records sold on the first album. If your first record is that big – you know that saying, you never have a second chance at a first impression – so people will never really appreciate you as much as they did at that point.”
With a second series of Power Book III: Raising Kanan commissioned before the first even aired, another Starz show called Black Mafia Family and a series for Netflix in the works, Jackson has plenty to keep him busy.
He says that in terms of his TV career, he was inspired to make his own shows by someone he looks up to.
“Sylvester Stallone’s career is my hero career, and it’s because he made the projects that made his career work. He made Rocky, he made Rambo, made Escape Plan – he makes these franchises himself, comes up with the right idea that could work for him and writes the project and everything.”
“So I like that, to develop the things that I’m involved in, that I feel passionate enough about the project after I’ve gone through it step by step.”
Power Book III: Raising Kanan is out now on streaming service Starzplay
The mother of Cassie Ventura has told a court she felt “physically sick” when her daughter told her Sean “Diddy” Combs had threatened to “release two explicit sex tapes” after discovering his long-time girlfriend was dating someone else.
Giving evidence on Tuesday, the seventh day of the trial, Regina Ventura said she did not initially understand the email Cassie sent her in December 2011, saying, “The sex tape threw me, [Diddy] was trying to hurt my daughter.”
The email said Combs was planning to release two explicit videos of her and send someone to hurt her and the man she was seeing, rapper Kid Cudi, whose real name is Scott Mescudi.
Regina said the family took out a home equity loan and paid Diddy $20,000 to recoup money he had spent on Cassie “because he demanded it,” angry that Cassie was now dating Cudi.
She said the money was returned days later.
During her evidence, jurors were shown photographs of bruises on Cassie’s body Ms Ventura said were taken when her daughter returned home for Christmas in 2011.
Regina’s time on the stand was fairly brief, as the defence declined the opportunity to question her.
Scott Mescudi, aka Kid Cudi, who dated Cassie in 2011. Pic: Reuters
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs trial: Day 7 – As it happened
Prosecutors say Combs, the founder of Bad Boy Records, forced women to take part in days-long, drug-fuelled sexual performances known as “Freak Offs” from 2004 to 2024, facilitated by his large retinue of staff. Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty.
The rapper faces five criminal counts: one count of racketeering conspiracy; two counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion; and two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution.
Combs and Cassie pictured in 2015. Pic: Reuters
Last week, the prosecutors’ star witness, Cassie Ventura, who dated Combs for over a decade, spent four days giving evidence.
Combs’s legal team has sought to show jurors that his relationship with Ventura was complicated, and while they acknowledge he was an abusive partner, and had substance issues, they say the sex acts described by the prosecution were consensual.
Read more:
Everything you need to know about the Sean Combs trial
The rise and fall of Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs
‘Diddy wanted our bodies to shine’
A male exotic dancer nicknamed “The Punisher” also gave testimony, telling jurors that in the autumn of 2012, Cassie contacted him asking him to “create a sexy, erotic scene” Diddy, and using the pseudonym “Janet”.
Male exotic dancer Sharay Hayes, aka The Punisher. Pic: Reuters
Sharay Hayes said he went on to have eight to 12 more encounters with the couple, having sex with Cassie, while Diddy watched from a distance.
He described the hotel rooms as routinely being dressed with electric candles and sheet-covered furniture, and says Cassie told him not to “acknowledge” her husband, and to “try not to look at him and no communication”.
He says Diddy would often wear a cap, and he could not see his face, but he later realised it was the famous rapper.
“The Punisher” mentioned using a “considerable amount of baby oil” during the performances, saying “[Diddy] wanted us to keep our bodies covered, to shine”.
He later described the acts as “a fetish type thing,” and while he said he believed Cassie was fully consensual, he also said he “did occasionally see her sigh or wince” and said she would frequently look at Diddy “for cues”.
Paid between $1,200 (£900) and $2,000 (£1.500) for each performance, he said he was not called back after struggling to get an erection during one encounter.
He said he never saw Diddy use drugs or saw filming during any of the performances.
Car park dispute with Suge Knight
David James, Diddy’s ex-personal assistant, also completed his evidence and testified that he never saw physical violence between Cassie and his former boss.
David James, Combs’s former assistant. Pic: Reuters
James, who worked for Diddy for two years, said he left Diddy’s employment after he realised his “life was in danger” following a dispute in a car park with rival record label owner Suge Knight, which culminated in Diddy bringing three handguns to try to find Knight and his entourage.
He also detailed an altercation between Diddy and his personal chef, Jourdan Atkinson, and said he refused to file a police report after Diddy told him to say “Chef Jourdan hit him first”.
The final person to give evidence was a special agent responsible for planning the March 2024 raids on Combs’s Miami home on Star Island.
Steve Gannon showed photos of items taken during the raid, including sex toys, high heels and loaded guns, and explained how an armoured vehicle was used to break down the mansion’s front gate to gain entry while the family was away on a trip.
Combs has been held in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn since September and faces at least 15 years or possibly life in prison if convicted.
The trial is set to last for around two months.
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