The first time 50 Cent met Dr Dre
If you were a fan of music there was no escaping Dr Dre in the 1990s. Scratch that, even if you weren’t a fan of music, you would have been hard pressed to have been spared from the symphonic sounds of ‘What’s the difference?’ or ‘The Next Episode’. The latter of which has an interesting backstory in its method of conception. It was a time when apple consumption was in decline as we wanted to keep the doctor as close as possible.
Similarly in the 2000s, it was impossible to be unaware of 50 Cent. The G-unit rapper rose to fame following the release of his 2003 record Get Rich or Die Tryin’. The success of which earned the Queens born rapper his acting debut with the film of the same name. Whether on the radio or on the big screen, 50 was anywhere and everywhere.
The success of the former enabled the rise to prominence of the latter. As it happens, their meeting would not happen organically. It would take a third legend, in Eminem, to introduce the two.
While featuring on the Jimmy Kimmel Show, the pair, alongside hip hop Icon Snoop Dogg, were asked how they came to meet. “I needed Em to get to him”, the ‘P.I.M.P’ rapper said. With the insider scoop, Kimmel probed a little further by stating that 50 “Took less money to work with Dr Dre than he could have received from others.”
Whilst Dre denied the claim with a smirk on his face, 50, in a manner which has become habitual for him in recent years, spoke with humility and said, “I got a lot of money though. He gave me a lot. He gave me a lot of money… I had a million dollars. Out of the neighbourhood, that’s a lot of f**cking money!… The first thing I did was I got my grandmother a car. Because I had an opportunity where I had a smaller amounts of money before, and when I got it, it burnt a hole in me, and it never got the chance to do nothing that really affected anything.”
Wrapping up the segment, Kimmel posed a final question to 50, asking whether Dre gave him any advice now that he had a larger amount of money that could burn more than just a hole. 50’s response, with perfect comedic timing and cadence, was, “He didn’t. He didn’t tell me that. He was like, ‘You’ll be alright.’”
That meeting was in 2002 when Dre signed 50 to Shady records, a subsidiary of his larger Aftermath Entertainment, following the release of the mixtape Guess Who’s Back?. A line you may be familiar with if you’ve heard a little-known song called ‘Without Me’, which was released in the same year.