Why New York is 50 Cent’s favourite city in the world
50 Cent’s music and business career have taken him all over the world, allowing him to experience so many different places. But, out of everywhere he’s been to, home is still where his heart is.
During a 2015 conversation with Condé Nast Traveler, the luxury travel magazine, 50 reflected on some of the places that he’s enjoyed most through his years of jetting around. Upon being asked where he’s felt happiest, he responded that he’s had “a lot of good moments,” but that there was one place that always stood out.
“I like London a lot,” he said. “It’s the first stop when you’re doing international press, and I got so much love when I first came over 12 years ago that it made me feel as if I always wanted to be there.”
50 loved the English capital so much that he once tried to incorporate parts of it into his music. “I even tried to record some tracks with a London accent,” he admitted, “because I liked it so much.”
But while London perhaps made him happiest, it wasn’t necessarily his favourite city in the world. His actual number-one was his home, New York City, where he was born and raised.
50 grew up in the South Jamaica neighborhood of Queens, which also produced rappers like Lloyd Banks, Nicki Minaj, Pharoahe Monch and many, many more. Life could be very tough there, as 50 learned so violently when he was shot there in 2000, but, despite that, he never fell out of love with the place.
“I’m not based there now,” he said of New York. “My big house is an estate in Connecticut and I own a few small properties sprinkled all over the place, in Atlanta, New Jersey and LA — but I’m in New York a lot.”
As a public figure, 50 found that New York audiences can be among the trickiest to get on side. “It’s the roughest crowd,” he said, “the toughest area to win over. But when they accept you’re the real deal and you get ’em, then everything else falls into place.”
Even though he left the city, it seems that 50 still admired its rough edges. He liked to return to the Big Apple a lot, while the fact that he managed, as a performer, to break through the New York crowd’s initial toughness seems to be a point of pride. He loves it.