50s Stabbing and Shooting

On March, 2000, 50 Cent was confronted by Ja Rule and other artists from Murder In. At the Hit Factory recording studio in Harlem, after he recorded a believed diss song called "Your Life's On The Line", which was related to an earlier confrontations and theories of Ja Rule's jewellry being robbed by a friend of 50 Cent. 50 Cent was stabbed by Murder Inc artist Black Child, and was treated for lacerations and a partially collapsed lung at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center.

On May 24, 2000, 50 Cent was attacked by a gunman, alleged to be Darryl "Hommo" Baum, outside his grandmother's former home in South Jamaica, Queens. He went into a friend's car, but was asked to return to the house to get jewelry. His son was in the house while his grandmother was in the front yard. Upon returning to the back seat of the car, another car pulled up nearby. An assailant then walked up to 50 Cent's left side with a 9mm handgun and fired nine shots at close range. He was shot nine times: in the hand (a round hit his right thumb and came out of his little finger), arm, hip, both legs, chest, and left cheek. The face wound resulted in a swollen tongue, the loss of a wisdom tooth, and a small slur in his voice. His friend also sustained a gunshot wound to the hand. They were driven to the hospital where 50 Cent spent thirteen days. Baum, the alleged shooter, was killed three weeks later. Baum was also Mike Tyson's close friend and bodyguard.

50 Cent recalled the incident saying, "It happens so fast that you don't even get a chance to shoot back.... I was scared the whole time.... I was looking in the rear-view mirror like, 'Oh shit, somebody shot me in the face! It burns, burns, burns.'" In his memoir, From Pieces to Weight: Once upon a Time in Southside Queens, he wrote, "After I got shot nine times at close range and didn't die, I started to think that I must have a purpose in life... How much more damage could that shell have done? Give me an inch in this direction or that one, and I'm gone". He used a walker for the first six weeks and fully recovered after five months. When he left the hospital, he stayed in the Poconos with his then-girlfriend and son. His workout regime helped him attain his muscular physique.

While in the hospital, 50 Cent signed a publishing deal with Columbia Records. However, he was dropped from the label and "blacklisted" in the recording industry because of his song "Ghetto Qu'ran". Unable to find a studio to work with in the U.S, he traveled to Canada. Along with his business partner Sha Money XL, he recorded over thirty songs for mixtapes, with the purpose of building a reputation. 50 Cent's popularity rose and in 2002, he released material independently on the mixtape, Guess Who's Back?. Beginning to attract interest, and now backed by G-Unit, 50 Cent continued to make songs. They released the mixtape, 50 Cent Is the Future, revisiting material by Jay-Z and Raphael Saadiq