50 Cent explains how he blew $470 million and ended up bankrupt
50 Cent once blew $470 million and ended up bankrupt.
The rapper, whose real name is Curtis James Jackson III, is arguably one of the biggest rappers on the planet as a result of many stellar tracks.
I mean, 'In Da Club' and 'Candy Shop' is pretty much seared into our brains at this point.
When it comes to money, however, his story is quite incredible.
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50 really did burst onto the scene with his debut album 'Get Rich or Die Tryin'.
And the album was so successful that he was able to buy a mansion once owned by Mike Tyson.
He followed up that early success by going on to sell over 30 million albums over a glittering career and making a number of business moves.
Some of them paid off incredibly well, like the stake he bought in VitaminWater in 2004 which earned him somewhere in the region of $100 million after Coca-Cola decided they wanted to buy the brand for $4.1 billion.
Other moves didn't work out quite so well, however, especially since he made a few investments around the time of the global recession in 2008 which ended up costing him several million dollars.
His financial woes came to a head in 2015 when he filed for bankruptcy - though it wasn't long before he bounced back from that particular nadir.
In this case, going bankrupt doesn't mean he went totally broke, even if his financial status did diminish somewhat from a previously incredibly high point.
TikToker Frank Michael Smith laid out some of the woes behind the rapper's financial struggles, explaining that many of the most visible aspects of his lavish lifestyle were rented rather than owned outright.
They said 50 Cent had a net worth of around $500 million back in 2010 back when things were going well for him, but was closer to $30 million in 2022.
Some of the biggest matters he'd had to deal with were legal issues, having forked over at least $23 million in legal fees during the past 20 years, including for a legal battle over leaking an adult film with Rick Ross's girlfriend in it.
And other more recent lawsuits were against a Miami doctor who suggested the rapper had penis enlargement surgery, and a judge refusing to dismiss the lawsuit.
There was also the loss of his five year legal battle against Rick Ross.
He may have gone bankrupt at one point, but speaking to The Guardian in 2020, the rapper explained that normal people didn't understand bankruptcy and it let him start over fresh.
He said: "Business people will do that in a heartbeat before losing money. Because it means they have the ability to be secure and invest again."
Shortly after declaring bankruptcy, he was given the chance to act in and executive produce TV show Power, signing a $150 million deal.
If that's not landing on your feet, I don't know what is.
Callum Jones