Why did 50 Cent stop wearing a bulletproof vest?
The cover art of Get Rich Or Die Tryin’, the album that made 50 Cent a world-famous star, is iconic today, 22 years since its release. It presents 50 himself, shirtless and staring down the camera, standing behind a cracked pane of glass. It is instantly recognisable, a key image of the rapper’s lore. But it is missing something, perhaps the most important item associated with 50 Cent from this early period of his career: his bulletproof vest.
50 tended to wear his bulletproof vest at every opportunity during this era—be it during photoshoots, when he was performing on stage, or even throughout the course of his day-to-day life. He even had one made for his young kid to wear—a “tailor-made, kiddie-size [and] navy-blue” vest, as The Guardian described it in March 2003. The bulletproof vest was an emblematic piece of clothing for the rapper, central to his public persona. But he didn’t wear it for the mere sake of it. It served a real purpose.
50 Cent was, famously, shot nine times, leading to wounds to his hands, arms, legs, chest, hip and cheek. He so easily could have died in that ordeal, and, while he later embraced the experience, crediting it with instilling within him a determination to make his career work out, he wanted to protect himself should something like that ever happen again.
The vest, then, was an entirely rational thing for him to wear.
So, why did 50 Cent stop wearing a bulletproof vest?
We don’t see 50 Cent wearing his iconic vest these days—and we haven’t in quite some time. The rapper has moved on, but why is that, exactly? How did he become comfortable moving through life without the weighty safety of that vest on his body?
The man himself addressed this question a couple of years ago, during an interview he did with Men’s Health. Basically, he explained, he no longer had much use for the vest, because his other security measures had developed to such an extent that there was, simply, no need for it anymore.
“When I stopped wearing a bulletproof vest, I don’t have a specific timeline for that,” 50 said during the interview. “What happened [is that] I had got other things. I had got vehicles. Like, full-blown level six.”
What he means by that is that he’d started to drive around in vehicles that offered an awful lot more protection than a mere bulletproof vest ever could. Armoured vehicles of such quality that even a president of the United States could feel safe enough to ride around in them—literally. If we take 50’s own word for it, his new cars are the “same stuff Obama is riding on.”
There was, in practical terms, no longer any reason for 50 Cent to continue wearing his bulletproof vests. The protection that his new vehicles offered him was just so much greater than what a vest could offer, so, eventually, he began to phase them out. It makes sense that he would do that, especially when we consider how cumbersome they must have been to wear. If they no longer served a purpose, why bother weighing yourself down like that?
But, on the other hand, there must have been some doubts about dropping the vest entirely. They were, as 50 himself understood, so central to his public image. Phasing them out would, in effect, mean moving on from such an important part of his life. But, two decades after his breakthrough, he realised that the time was right.