His pendant—a platinum cross, embedded with hefty diamonds–clinks against his bulletproof vest every time he moves, which he does often. He’s an expert raconteur: his sizable, sculpted arms—adorned with elaborate curlicued tattoos—wave in the air. He breaks his sentences into punchlines, adding a smile, a “ya feel me?” or a grimace to bring his point home. “I ain’t never bit my tongue,” he says. Pause. “Once, by accident.” Smile. The rubber-gripped semi-automatic handgun never leaves his waist. Well, only once, to show the bullet wounds on his legs.
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"He was always the nikka having beef on the block,” says a neighborhood friend. “When he was coming, nikkas was like, ‘This nikka gonna get nikkas robbed, take nikkas work, ‘cause he want the whole block.’ He always wanted the whole block for himself.” He robbed the competition relentlessly. One guy came at him with a gun. “Yo, my daughter gotta eat,” the guy said.
I’m not trying to take food from your daughter’s mouth,” Curtis replied. “I’m just trying to get you to do it the right way.” The guy ended up getting work from Curtis. “I gave it to him on consignment,” he recalls. “I’m not stopping a nikka from totally doing what he would do. If you do that, then nikkas is gonna kill you, bottom line.”
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None of my situations with Ja Rule are big situations,” says 50. “They’re little. We had physical altercations. I was never hurt in none of those scenarios. I been hurt worse fukkin’ with my baby mother. I got a real stab wound from my baby mother and a little three-stitch situation from [messing with Ja Rule and his crew]. When you weigh the two, I’m more watching what I say about my baby mother than what I say about them, ‘cause she’ll cut me worse than them.”
50 says his problems with Ja Rule began when a friend of 50’s robbed Ja of a chain in Queens. A neighborhood heavy got the chain back for Ja. But Ja saw his robber and 50 being friendly in a club. When 50 approached Ja, Ja was miffed. “He treated me like I did something to him,” says 50. He told Ja, “I didn’t do nothing to you. That nikka that robbed you is right there. You ain’t got no problem with him, but you got a problem with me?’ That pissed me off.” He recorded a diss to Ja, “Your Life Is On the Line.” 50 later ran into Ja in Atlanta and punched him in the face, took his chain, and came back to New York. He returned the chain through a mutual friend. “I was like, ‘This is not about that. I don’t want this nikka’s chain.’” He was rewarded with a Movado watch from a third-party arbitrator, which suits him fine. He likes watches.
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During the fight, someone backed into the wall and the lights fluttered. “They made it seem like it was gangsta,” 50 recalls. “I looked at it like it was a promotional stunt. The lights go off and then come on and I leave with three stitches? Well, then leave the fukking lights on, ‘cause nikkas is leaving with 150-160 stitches in the club. So you turning the lights off made you stab the wrong nikka, so you did the wrong thing. That’s not gangsta.”
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“nikkas look to me to see which way we gonna go, what we gonna do,” he says. “These nikkas”–he motions to the guys in the room—”they would be hustling for me if I wasn’t rapping. Everybody gotta eat. Your strength is in numbers. You realize that when you in the hospital with a brace in your mouth, your leg shot the fukk out and you like, ‘Yo, I don’t believe these nikkas [shot me].’ If I’m up to tell nikkas, ‘Go smoke them nikkas,’ nikkas is dead the next day. But because I’m out, in the hospital, the situation is prolonged. They need you to stand there to say that.”
. Got some back from friends who wanted to dump theres but I lost a few good issues.
