Curtis James Jackson III, known professionally as 50 Cent, is an American rapper, actor, television producer, and businessman.

SHORT PROFILE

Name: Curtis James Jackson III	DOB: 6 July 1975
Place of Birth: New York, New York, USA	Occupation: Rapper

Interview by Rolex Talk

I’m having a tough time deciding how to address you. Should I call you Mr. Jackson, Curtis, Fifty, or maybe Mr. Cent?

My friends call me Fifty, but you can call me Curtis if you feel like it.

All right Curtis, were you always a good businessman even before you became a musician?

Yeah, I did pretty well. You mean selling drugs?

4000 — Image by: Maarten de Boer/ABC/Getty

Yes, were you a better drug dealer than others?

Yes, I did really well until the police came a few times. See, when you make the wrong decisions in business you lose money but you don’t lose time and time is very precious because we don’t know how much we have.

So time is more precious than money?

Absolutely.

That is always easier to say when you have lots of money…

But of how much value is your money if you die ten minutes after you get it? Think about how many times you smile if you see a kid doing something. The innocence of that, that is priceless. If you ask a person about the last time they smiled or felt good, they will tell you that is valuable.

Okay, if time is precious what is money?

Money is freedom. It is the ability to do things as you come up with it. I used to think that money was the answer to everything because the big problem in front of me was financial. Every idea I came up with I needed the money to do it. You sit there and create these scenarios in your head and then if you have money it only gives you the ability to come and go as you please if you have an idea.

Now that you have all the money in the world, what gives you the ambition to actually keep on going with it instead of just sitting back and relaxing?

If you are ambitious, you are running in a tunnel that never ends. You will always find something new to go after. If you would have asked me for one wish in 2003 I would have told you that I want my music to be a success. But now I know what that feels like and you can’t match that anymore because the first time you feel something it’s different. In hip hop music you create metaphors constantly, so try to imagine creating a metaphor for having sex for the first time. It’s monumental. Create a metaphor for the first time you were in love, that’s monumental. Or the first time an addict got high, you can’t recreate that. I got high for the first time with Get Rich or Die Tryin’ and I have been trying to achieve that feeling again since then, all the time.

“The jewelry comes from not having. From not having, you aspire to live life on the highest level possible.”
Curtis

You make music, films, perfumes, clothes, shoes, condoms, and pretty much every other imaginable merchandise. How many hours a night do you mange to sleep?

I probably sleep as much as you do, about five to six hours.

I actually get a bit more than that.

(Laughs) I oversee all my projects and deal with portions of the information but I delegate the responsibilities as well and hire people for certain positions. A lot of my employees are actually smarter than me and have achieved a higher level of education. Some of them are even Harvard graduates. I put these guys in positions to run my companies.

Do you hire people strictly based on their educational background?

Not necessarily just the educational background but also their experience in their fields. My choice always depends on what I want to accomplish with a certain project. Based on the résumé alone you could sometimes hire the wrong person and then later realize that they might be qualified but they can’t actually execute. If that happens you fire them and hire someone else.

You wear a lot less flashy jewelry when you promote your business ventures than when you’re promoting your music. Is this an effort to project a different image?

The guy that has on athletic inspired clothing might be someone that you could point to and say, “That’s hip-hop.” The baseball hat, the different things, the do-rag, I suppose could be something you would identify with me as an artist. When you start to dress with more casual clothing or more professional clothing, like a suit, people start wondering. The jewelry I think comes from not having. From not having, you aspire to live life on the highest level possible. When you start off not even being able to fantasize about buying your own car, you buy one as soon as you’re able to.

What do people expect when they meet you in person?

The expectations of me are based on the material, based on the content. People have expected me to be incarcerated or go through things that I went through before I was successful, but because I have been through them there are other things I want to do. I look forward to being successful doing different things and that changing my image. Sometimes I leave a conversation and people are surprised that I am the nicest guy because they expected that I would shoot them or something. You know what I am saying?

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Alicia Augello Cook, known professionally as Alicia Keys, is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. A classically trained pianist, Keys started composing songs when she was 12 and was signed at 15 years old by Columbia Records.

Name: Alicia Augello Cook	DOB: 25 January 1981
Place of birth: Manhattan, New York, USA	Occupation: Musician

Interview by Talks Rolex

Ms. Keys, why do you write?

”Since I was young I’d always write things down just to get it out of my head, almost to make space, because I haven’t always been so good at communicating one on one. So I’d always have to write it down first and kind of understand it and then be able to talk about it. You need to get it out of yourself, out of your mind, out of your heart, out of your way, to understand it. I have a lot of diaries and I love paper, I’m a paper fanatic, I love books that have empty pages”.

Do you still keep a diary today?

”No — crazy thing though! Just last night when I was washing my face to go to sleep I was thinking about this. I had such an incredible night, I was celebrating my mother whose birthday is on Mother’s Day. My son Egypt was there and I was just thinking about how I felt and I was like, “I need to start a new diary!” And then I was trying to figure out when am I going to find the time to write in them every day… But you have to, it’s good for you. Some of my songs are about things that I personally have been wanting to talk about and get off my own chest”.

gxl 57f7cc11 df24 4491 99fe 12570a771fd0 — Photo by Paola Kudacki

That can often be very personal though. Is it important for you to be able to make yourself vulnerable?

Oh my gosh. I promise you, I’m really just fully learning this now! I, myself, am just learning this now. And I know now, for sure, the people that are most in touch with their emotions and their feelings, people that can just cry at the drop of a dime because they relate so much to someone else’s pain or they just don’t care how they look, and they say, I’m feeling this way today — those are the strongest people I know. Those are the strongest people I know. I think you rob yourself of life, you rob yourself of your own experience when you don’t let yourself feel whatever it is that you feel!

“Once you express yourself, you’re in that vulnerable state, you’re growing, you’re learning, and you’re able to become stronger.”
Alicia keys

A lot of times when people talk about empowering women, they often use male-associated attributes, whereas crying is typically seen as a sign of weakness.

alicia keys allure february 2017 cover — Photo by Paola Kudacki

Right. Our boys and our young men can never be expressive. If they cry they hear, “Why you acting soft?” Once you express yourself, you’re in that vulnerable state, you’re growing. You’re learning, and you’re able to become stronger because you’re saying, “Okay, here’s who I am, here’s what I feel, here’s who I want to be, here’s what I want to let go of.” But if you never get a change to express it or feel it, or go through it, you can never get to the next place! So I personally feel that I’ve learned that. And it’s so empowering; it really is! I’ve kept myself down in the past, I’ve kept myself from growing by not allowing myself to just be vulnerable.

When you entered the music industry you were only a teen, so I can imagine you’ve learned a lot since then.

It was a natural progression for me, and I think it’s a natural progression for all of us, but when I first started in the world of music it was such a shock and such a different world. In a lot of ways I started to think that I had to be perfect and look perfect and sound perfect and say the perfect phrase.

The entertainment industry is particularly judgmental.

There is a lot of judgment in the world, period. We judge each other at school since the day we go. We judge each other at work, and we compete. And now on social media we have to look at everybody judging us, telling us what they think about us and what they don’t like about us — and it’s a lot. I think the judgment happens to all of us no matter where you go, and who you are, it’s intense.

How did you cope with that environment?

Well, instead of just kind of settling into being comfortable with who I am and saying, “Oh well, not everybody’s going to like me,” I got more and more closed up and more concerned about what people thought. But with time you grow up! (Laughs). That’s all! You just grow up and realize that everybody’s opinion doesn’t matter! You just start to care less. My new album is also about breaking out of that and redefining whoever you are, who you want to be. It’s about life as it truly is, not as how we’re made to think that it should be. Imperfection and the reality of who we are as people and celebrating that truth. And not making shit up.

Do you feel like those dynamics are getting better within the entertainment industry?

I speak to a lot of businesswomen and I find that they do feel very held back, still. That there’s an almost a discomfort or fear about allowing us as women to rise, to go to the next level. And obviously there’s still so many issues with equal pay scale and equality and I find it pretty crazy because obviously the more diversity there is, the stronger the business. But unfortunately a lot of people are very archaic in their thinking, so I feel that there is that challenge still. You still have to work extra hard, harder than a man would, you still have to prove yourself more. So it’s very frustrating, but I also do know that this is the time of the woman — and if you don’t know it, you’d better start to get it! Because you’re going to get left behind. So I do definitely see an improvement in the world in that sense.

Would you say your new album is political?

What is going on around us in the world is absolutely the majority of the conversation of this album. For the first time my album is raw and truthful. We’re all thinking about it more. We’re not okay with just sitting back and letting society or government bodies tell us what’s happening anymore. We see it with our own two eyes, we’re talking about it, and we’re standing up against it. We want equality and justice. No matter how you’ll express it, it’s going to come out of you. It cannot be held back anymore.

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SFI.COZA

SFI.COZA

Day: March 28, 2023

CURTIS ‘50 CENT’ JACKSON: “MONEY IS FREEDOM”

ALICIA KEYS: “IT CAN’T BE HELD BACK ANYMORE”

Ms. Keys, why do you write?

A lot of times when people talk about empowering women, they often use male-associated attributes, whereas crying is typically seen as a sign of weakness.