50 Cent | The New York Observer

Kanye Goes After Paparazzi With ALL CAPS

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:57:58 -0500

Time to check back in with Kanye West and 50 Cent, hip-hop’s favorite rivals. It seems Kanye got into another scrap with a paparazzo outside a club in England early Friday morning (the first since his tussle with a cameraman in LA back in September). According to TMZ.com (via MTV.com), Kanye was leaving Newcastle’s Tup Tup club with four girls when a photographer got in his face. A minor fracas allegedly ensued, leaving the...

50 Cent Gets Real(ity)

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 12:32:42 -0400

While Kanye West—50 Cent’s one-time rival—makes headlines for his actual music, Fiddy seems content to bask in the comfy glow of reality television (and tie-in consumerism). According to a press release on Nah Right (via Idolator), it seems MTV’s “50 Cent: The Money and the Power” (set to premiere on November 6) is a sort of hip-hop version of The Apprentice in which 50 plays The Trump and 14 “wannabe moguls” play Donald’s lowly...

Bob Miller's HarperStudio To Publish Mark Twain, Eisner, 50 Cent, New Yorker Cartoon Editor Bob Mankoff

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 08:50:18 -0400

Bob Miller has unveiled the 23 titles that will make up his first list at HarperStudio, the imprint he started last spring at HarperCollins with the goal of finding a model for book publishing that doesn't rely on paying authors outsize advances or allowing retailers to return unsold stock. Mr. Miller's announcement, which he made this morning on HarperStudio's new blog, brings to an end several months of industry-wide speculation about just what kinds...

Cast of 50 Cent's MTV Reality Show Moving Into Greenpoint Loft

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:08:42 -0400

Williamsburg and Greenpoint residents may soon feel like they are living on the set of a reality TV show. The cast of the Apprentice-style MTV show starring 50 Cent is moving into a three-story, newly renovated loft building on the Greenpoint waterfront, a well-placed source has informed us.

The series will follow 16 aspiring rap moguls as they compete in a series of challenges to determine their "savvy, street smarts, manipulation, power and the...

Morning Memo: Sex Stars Tune-Up; Obamas Just Like Us

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 08:54:18 -0400

Cynthia Nixon and Kristin Davis have both reportedly paid a visit to the doctor shortly after Sex and the City's release, opting for a breast augmentation surgery and a varicose vein removal, respectively. [P6]

Barack and Michelle Obama appear on the cover of Us Weekly this week with Mrs. Obama depicted as a "down-to-earth mom." Never mind the fact that she graduated cum laude from Princeton followed by Harvard Law. [Us Weekly]

...

Fire at 50 Cent's Long Island Home

Fri, 30 May 2008 12:04:43 -0400

Six people are reportedly hospitalized after a "highly suspicious" fire burned down the multimillion-dollar Long Island home of rapper 50 Cent this morning, TMZ reports (click through for photos.).

Names of those who were involved in the fire have not been released, but the rapper's ex, Shaniqua Tompkins, and their 10-year-old son, Marquise, were in the house at the time of the fire.

The home has been at the center of a lawsuit...

Green Day: March 14, 2008

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 09:18:48 -0400

Read Steve Cohen's take on the "greening" of the new Mets ballfield and a new green software-helper for Major Leage Baseball. [Steve Cohen]

Johnny Depp, Snoop Dogg, Harrison Ford, and 50 Cent join forces to free Lolita from imprisonment. No, it's not an action-adventure movie; it's a benefit concert to free a whale from Miami Seaquarium. [gristmill.grist.org]

Connecticut Gov. Jodi Rell will seek incoming Gov. David Paterson's help to stop the Broadwater project, a floating, 1,200-foot-long,...

The Transom

Sun, 27 Nov 2005 19:00:00 -0500

Who Didn’t Shoot 50 Cent?

On Monday, Nov. 21, a bulky, soft-voiced black man in a brown hooded sweatshirt named Jon Ragin sat in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn. He was offering testimony about one of hip-hop’s most notorious shootings, the May 24, 2000, attack on superstar rapper 50 Cent. The incident—in which 50 was shot nine times outside his grandmother’s house in the South Jamaica section of Queens—is perhaps the most critical...

The Transom

Sun, 27 Nov 2005 19:00:00 -0500

Who Didn’t Shoot 50 Cent? On Monday, Nov. 21, a bulky, soft-voiced black man in a brown hooded sweatshirt named Jon Ragin sat in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn. He was offering testimony about one of hip-hop’s most notorious shootings, the May 24, 2000, attack on superstar rapper 50 Cent. The incident—in which 50 was shot nine times outside his grandmother’s house in the South Jamaica section of Queens—is perhaps the most critical chapter...

WOOD WAR XXIII

Tue, 22 Nov 2005 15:54:00 -0500

Who's winning the battle of the front pages? The Daily News makes testimony about 50 Cent's shooting sound like one of those Parade magazine "How I Overcame My Goiter" celebrity profiles. But even a fuzzy and boring Fitty treatment beats blowing out the front page for a house ad for the Post's Scooby-Doo promotional comic book. Thirty-six pages of great family fun! Thirty-seven if you count Andrea Peyser! Mommy, what's a "randy Catholic schoolteacher"? Winner:...

This New House. And This One. And This One!

Wed, 24 Aug 2005 04:30:00 -0400

Apparently, once you purchase a $27 million penthouse, completing a massive renovation loses its luster. Early this year, Alan Meltzer (at left in picture), co-founder and chief executive of Wind-up Entertainment, purchased a palatial 8,687-square-foot penthouse at celebrity-filled One Beacon Court. But that left one question: what would he do with his penthouse apartment at 944 Park Avenue and the additional unit of raw space he purchased underneath? Buying at Beacon, Mr. Meltzer had no need...

How We Do? Rappers Play To, For, The Press

Wed, 10 Aug 2005 13:29:00 -0400

It is the knee-jerk tendency to avoid new money here at the Transom. But usually, our nose only actually turns up at those who hold some illusions on the matter; for instance, those who try to play blue blood like they were born with it. Curtis Jackson, who performs under the professional name of 50 Cent, and who performed a two-show stint with Marshall Mathers at Madison Square Garden on Monday and Tuesday nights,...

My Two Cents on 50 Cent, Lovett, Massive Attack, Other 'Pokey' CD's

Sun, 16 Mar 2003 19:00:00 -0500

O.K., it's been a few weeks now since the latest annual installment of The Village Voice Pazz & Jop Critics' Poll made its newsstand debut, but no-lifer that I am, I'm still obsessing over the results. My smug inner contrarian was happy to see that precisely zero of the other 694 critics who participated voted for one of the albums that I included on my 2002 Top 10 list: Tom Burris' For Sale ,...