GAMEchAnGinG

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But the Brand-Building actor slash Business magnate

is Back in the studio, sounding out new Beats and

Behind the façade of beaches and boutiques, the celebrity hotspots and million-dollar lofts, Santa Monica, California, has a secret history of warfare. During World War II, this city by the Pacific was home to the American aeronautics industry and played an integral role in keeping the US war machine running. Here, engineers and designers drew up the plans for fighter planes, while welders and construction crews made them into reality.

Sixty years later, the airplane hangers and warehouse buildings no longer bustle with the activity of warplane builders. The creative industry has now taken over these expansive complexes, turning them into movie and music studios, perhaps in the hope that they can channel the innovation and

Words: Drew Tewksbury Portraits: Emily Shur

work ethic that once teemed under these thick wood rafters and curved roofs.

Somewhere inside a huge warehouse dating back to 1959, the inimitable rapper, actor, and entrepreneur Curtis James Jackson III, aka 50 Cent, is in the studio debuting beats that will be the skeletal structure of his next album.

Two dark black Cadillac Escalades wait like club bouncers outside the door of the Red Bull Recording Studio, and inside, the bass is quaking. Jackson and his team sit in the control room, behind a state-of-the-art mixing desk, compressors, speakers and all manner of cables. A stony-faced man in jeans and suit jacket sits on the couch, while Jackson is pleading the case for his beats.

It has been a year of relative radio silence for Jackson and nearly a year

since his much delayed last album, Before I Self Destruct, hit the streets last November. Other than a handful of remixes and cameos, the rapper has largely stayed off the media radar. While other rappers have been dropping pretentious art films (Kanye), scripting prison communiques (Lil’ Wayne), or waxing literary on book tours (Jay-Z), Jackson has been developing his film career and perfecting his sound to come.

His entourage in the studio looks nothing like the gangstas, pimps, or playas preening behind him in rap videos. Instead, these are the men behind the music, the ideas men, beat aficionados, and business types who are helping to determine Jackson’s next move in music. He presses play on a laptop and the beats swell, Jackson’s

mulling the future of music

it’s Been a while since we’ve heard from 50 cent.

chAnGinG

head, topped with a baseball hat, nods to the bass-heavy, lurching beat, as he paces around the studio, repeatedly checking his BlackBerry. Jackson’s a compulsive Twitter-fiend, and even in top-secret studio sessions, he can’t help but throw some textual messages in bottles out to the digital sea.

Jackson’s arms are chiselled, tightly fitting into his YSL shirt. His eyes stare at the glow of the computer screen, then up to his team assembled in the room, some of whom nod their heads, while others stare downward, listening intently to these never-before-heard sounds.

There’s the steady kick drum pulsing waves of bass over rolling snares, mixing the ubiquitous warehouse party thump with the syncopated groove of classic hip-hop. Jackson moves to the beat, seemingly laying down a flow in his head to these instrumental tracks. He seems tired but healthy, a far cry from the shocking images of Jackson that hit the internet, revealing his emaciated face with sharpened cheekbones and cavernous eyes, evidence of his dramatic 54lb weight loss for his role as a college football quarterback ravished by cancer in the upcoming Things Fall Apart. He reaches to turn off the song, revealing forearms inscribed with mysterious scars.

After more than an hour of beat debuts and secret conversations with the producers, his management team packs their bags for a flight back to New York. Jackson has been away from his roots in NYC for a month-long mission in LA.

“I’m here to find new sounds,” he says softly, a surprisingly different cadence from his Rottweiler growl on records. He just did a remix for the club anthem ‘Like a G6’, produced by Los Angeles’ Korean-American sensations, Far East Movement. “I mean that’s a different pocket. It feels like dance music. A lot of really up-tempo beats, that’s faster than what I would usually do.”

The rap game today has changed. The class of 2010 barely resembles Jackson’s compatriots at the turn of the millennium. Hip-hop has gone fully pop, complete with upbeat dance rhythms and auto-tuned choruses crooned by aesthetically oriented starlets. Kids from Inglewood – the ancestral home of West Coast gangsta rap – now wear neon and

A c t i o n

“i won’t Be travelling or go on Big tours. when i wasmaking music initially it was just for a 10-Block

radius, now it’s for the world

skinny jeans, as though to hark back to the old days of rap, where electro and hip-hop overlapped with the 808 drum machine-banging sounds of Arabian Prince and J.J. Fad. Like those days before the late 1980s crack epidemic, LA’s crime rate is relatively low and kids are headed back to the clubs. Los Angeles raves, like this summer’s Electric Daisy Carnival, brought in 80,000 wide-eyed rollers from across diverse economic and racial divides. While Jackson’s style of hard-edged hip-hop has largely stagnated, Kanye’s gone art-house and Jay-Z has become a father figure.

Jackson is no stranger to trendspotting or self-examination and, earlier in 2010, he announced that his next album, Black Magic, would lean more towards an emerging confluence of hip-hop and Europop. Then just a few months later, Jackson wound down the project.

“I moved it, because it’s a total artist’s album,” he says, “it was something that I just wanted to do, so I went in and recreationally made a full-bodied piece of work. I gave myself a new concept and now it’s in the vault, but you can build another album out of that material that you put to the side.”

Pieces of Black Magic, or at least their house influence, appear in these studio songs, but at best they are just prototypes. No album title nor song titles have been announced, nor a release date. After Black Magic went in flux, Jackson re-evaluated his music-making process and ruminated on whether his movie projects and other entrepreneurial efforts would leave room for hip-hop.

“I feel like I’ll have to do it at a different pace,” he says. “I won’t be travelling as often, or go on big tours. It’s not a long drawn-out process for me to create it, but it’s a long drawn-out process deciding what to offer the world. When I was making music initially, it was just for a 10-block radius, now it’s for the world.”

Eight years ago, Eminem first invited Jackson to come to Los Angeles to showcase the young upstart rapper’s skill to the legendary Dr Dre. The meeting resulted in a $1 million record deal, which led to 2003 debut Get Rich or Die Tryin’. The album set sales records with 872,000 copies sold in just four

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fades as his voice projects confidence and eloquence. He can sell you anything, and he will. Even in a struggling economy, Jackson has the Midas touch in the business world. His entrepreneurial efforts include the G-Unit clothing brand, a film production company, and even a stake in a South African platinum mine.

According to Forbes, in 2008, he brought in $150 million in 12 months. The bulk came in when Coca-Cola bought Vitamin Water’s parent company Glacéau for $4.1 billion. Jackson had received a stake in the company after creating an offshoot brand of beverage called ‘Formula 50’, and that foresight landed him with a $100 million profit. Then in October of 2010, Jackson and his partner Randall Emmett’s production company, Cheetah Vision, landed a $200 million deal to produce several films, including their first, Set Up.

While sitting outside on the studio’s stoop, Jackson’s agent calls: “Bruce is in,” he says. Willis, that is. The action star has committed to Jackson’s upcoming film project, Set Up, along with Paul Walker. Jackson smiles for the first time at the end of this long day. Before visiting the studio, he had been in talks at Creative Artists Agency (CAA), one of the world’s largest talent agencies. He had shifted to CAA earlier this year, he says, as they focused more on film than previous agency, William Morris.

“I love music, but I’ve developed a passion for film and being a part of film projects that have the right artistic qualities to them,” Jackson says.

Jackson kept a virtual photo diary of this day, snapping photos celebrities and actors he saw in the hallway. “This is me and Robert Redford, one of the best actors ever” he Tweeted, with a photo of himself with an arm around Redford.

“My goal is to get Things Fall Apart into Sundance,” he says. “Then I ran into Robert Redford today, who started it all, and he actually knew about it. I almost fainted.” Jackson stares at his picture with Redford on his BlackBerry. He ignores the demands of his companies, the haters and celebrity gossip hounds. He focuses on the Saltine-sized screen and smiles at the possibility of his name, Curtis Jackson III, scrolling the credits at Sundance. Then his manager interrupts the daydream, beckoning him away from the Santa Monica studio, and into an adjacent Escalade. The engine rumbles and the 50 Cent entourage speeds away.

On to the next one.Keep up with 50 Cent’s msuic, movies and more at www.50cent.com

jackson’s persona as a hip-hop star oBfuscates hisreal talent. his real gift is in the Boardroom. he can sell you anything, and he will

days. His next album The Massacre would break this record in 2005 with 1.14 million copies sold in four days.

Not bad for a kid from Queens, NY, whose past was mired in trouble. Raised during the 1980’s crack epidemic, Jackson was surrounded by drugs and crime. His mother was a dealer, and was murdered when Jackson was only eight years old. He turned to drug dealing to survive, and he brought in a healthy profit. By the time he was 19, Jackson had been arrested three times. To avoid jail he went to a boot camp programme to straighten out. When he returned to Queens, he began pursuing a rap career, and ultimately landed a $65,000 contract with Columbia. But before he could release his debut album in 2000, Jackson was shot nine times while leaving his grandmother’s house in Queens. He barely survived. Columbia saw Jackson as too controversial, and released him from the contract. When he recovered, Jackson picked up the rap game where he started: mixtapes. When one of his tapes landed in the hands of Eminem in 2002, Jackson’s life changed forever.

But eight years later, the music industry is evolving to save its existence. Jackson too has felt the effects and has developed his gameplan for this post- big-label environment.

“I think the new music business is going to be for you to identify how much people like you. Because some people like you enough to spend 99 cents for your single, some people like you enough to buy the actual album. Some people like you so much they want the hat you have on in the picture, they want your glasses, they want your shirt, and your shoes. They want everything that is attached to your lifestyle.”

“The object,” he continues. “Is to be connected to those businesses and brand things that they’ll actually acquire along with that single or along with that album. Artists are becoming NASCARs, and we just got to figure out who’s going to pay to put their sticker on each artist’s ass.”

Jackson’s persona as a hip-hop star obfuscates his real talent. His true power is not exhibited on stage, or with a mic or even on the movie screen. His real gift is in the boardroom. When he talks about business, his demeanor changes. The soft-spoken insecurity about his music career

Film Buff

Get Rich or Die Tryin’ (2005)The one that started it all, in which 50 aims to emulate Eminem’s 8 Mile

Twelve (2010) Rich NYC kids on too many drugs do bad things. Joel Schumacher directs, 50 deals

13 (2010) 50 joins Sam Riley and Mickey Rourke gambling with each other’s lives in a sick, twisted game

Gun (2010) Co-written by 50, who also stars as a drug kingpin opposite Val Kilmer

Since the semi-autobiographical Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ in 2005, Jackson’s career hasn’t involved too many awards show invites. Most of his films so far have been heavy on the drug dealing and the gunplay plotlines (a sample of his oeuvre so far, below). But last year, Jackson lost 54lb in nine weeks to play a cancer-stricken athlete in the upcoming film Things Fall Apart. His Cheetah Vision Films production company has attracted more than $200 million in investment and has just won Bruce Willis for the upcoming film, Set Up.

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