How Lloyd Banks avoided death after being shot twice
Many rappers have had brushes with death, and some of them don’t survive. Whether it’s from drug overdoses, gun violence or unfortunate accidents over the years, a number of MCs have passed away. However, G-Unit lyricist Lloyd Banks managed to survive a murder attempt in 2001 and lives to tell the tale.
As a member of 50 Cent’s G-Unit, Lloyd Banks was always a target. 50 Cent (real name Curtis Jackson) had a bounty on his head in Queens and managed to a drive-by shooting that saw him shot nine times in 2000. Following his success, the hatred of Jackson only got deeper, and his affiliates became targets too.
Lloyd Banks (real name Christopher Lloyd) was a loyal member of G-Unit. Alongside Tony Yayo, Young Buck and, of course, 50 Cent, he was a well-known face in New York who had appeared on anthems such as ‘Stunt 101’ and ‘Poppin’ Them Thangs’.
That said, in 2001, two years before the release of 50 Cent’s Get Rich Or Die Tryin’, there was still money on the heads of G-Unit members, and on September 10th, 2001, he was caught in the crossfire of a messy drive-by outside a Queens nightclub only five minutes from his house.
During a 2003 interview with MTV News, only two years after the incident, Lloyd explained to journalist Shaheem Reid that before G-Unit began to rise up the ranks of hip-hop, they were a small gang. Lloyd revealed that Tony Yayo grew up across the street from him, and 50 Cent lived around the corner.
The house that Jackson grew up in was where he was shot nine times in 2000, and Lloyd Banks admitted as 50 Cent, and G-Unit began to rise following Power Of The Dollar, he wasn’t focused on beef and had gone into music mode. Explaining this, Banks recalled, “At that time, I was doing little mixtapes, and I was still running around the hood.”
However, the focus on mixtapes meant he wasn’t paying attention to the politics of the street, and this led to his shooting. Looking back on the incident, Banks reflected, “I was in a club in Queens about five minutes from my house. It was a shootout. After the club, in my neighbourhood, you hear shots so much you grow a stubbornness. I’m like, ‘Somebody is probably shooting in the air.’ It might sound stupid, but I gotta feel something for me to turn into Jackie Joyner-Kersee. Just so happens those shots was hitting me. That’s the way the ball bounces sometimes.”
However, although he had seen 50 Cent get shot a year before and was used to hearing shots in his neighbourhood, the drive-by could have led to his death. Detailing where the bullets entered his body, Banks continued, “I got shot, and [a bullet] went through my liver,” he continued. “I was leaking a lot of blood. I ran to the hospital myself, it was ten blocks [away]. I got hit by a car on my way there.”
Unfortunately, to add insult to injury, after waking up in the hospital, Lloyd Banks saw the 9/11 attacks first-hand. Recalling this, he stated, “I woke up in the hospital, and I saw the Twin Towers fall. I thought I was watching ‘Independence Day’ or something. The nurses were running around acting crazy, like, ‘The buildings fell!'”
Although Banks recalled the shooting as if it were a normal event, the bullet to his liver could have caused liver failure and resulted in death. As such, he was very likely to survive and is one of many MCs who have had a close call with death.