How 50 Cent Conquered Television

[RamsayBolton]

How 50 Cent Conquered Television

The 'Power' and 'BMF' producer has built a TV empire the same way he did his rap career: with drive, talent, and plenty of trolling.

www.gq.com

Hardwick rose to the occasion, 50 Cent had his lead, and Power, which premiered in 2014 and followed St. Patrick as he struggled to straddle the line between entrepreneur and criminal, became Starz’s most-viewed program by the end of its six-season run, averaging roughly 10 million multi-platform viewers per episode. This led to the creation of three spin-offs comprising the “Power Universe.” Power Book ll: Ghost, which picked up where the original series left off, debuted in 2020. The next year saw the debut of Power Book lll: Raising Kanan, a prequel set during the early ‘90s; it returned for its second season on August 14 and was recently renewed for a third. Power Book IV: Force premiered earlier this year and expands the universe from New York to Chicago. 50 Cent, 47, also unveiled BMF last fall, a drama inspired by the origin of the Black Mafia Family’s infamous drug-smuggling and money-laundering operation in 1980s Detroit.

Although each show fits into the crime drama category, 50 Cent has a slightly different slant on them. “I look at my shows like family dramas,” he says, clad in a plaid navy-blue wool suit that hugs his broad shoulders, a navy blue turtleneck, and white Stan Smith sneakers on this cold February day. “They just have the intensity of the street life in them.”

According to Kemp, she and 50 Cent were adamant that Power be music driven. “That show is a roller coaster of emotion, and music serves to underscore those points,” she says. “I won’t say we broke ground, but it’s something that is a feature of those series’, of course.”

Each show’s soundtrack leans on hip-hop and R&B needle drops, while the period series Raising Kanan and BMF rely on the power of nostalgia to ground them in the past and underscore big scenes. In Raising Kanan, a murder is accompanied by the teenage LaVerne “Jukebox” Ganner (Hailey Kilgore) singing Whitney Houston’s “You Give Good Love” a cappella. And on BMF, the unhinged drug dealer Lamar Silas (Eric Kofi-Abrefa) sings Loose Ends’ “You Can’t Stop the Rain” before fatally stabbing an associate.

Their approach worked. Power caught on almost immediately, and only grew from there: Its first-season finale went on to draw twice the audience of its premiere and established the show as a new hit within a growing TV landscape.

“When Power hits the bullseye, then Empire comes,” he says, thinking back on his scheme with clear satisfaction. “And because the executives over there are smart, they use Power. They say [in their marketing]: ‘Empires are built on power.’ I go, ‘Oh shyt, see how they stole my shyt?’” But wait: He didn’t actually believe that. “I was really creating that problem publicly because [Fox] had more money than Starz. They're going to spend way more marketing dollars on Empire than I can spend on what I have going on with Power. So, I would say things to make you feel like there's beef between me and them. The coverage that you get from it being beef would make them always have me in thought. The journalist comes to talk to them, the first thing they say is: ‘Yeah, the show is great. I got a chance to see the first two episodes, but 50 said you ain't shyt. So how you feel about that?’”

This has been the 50 playbook for decades. “If you don't have enemies, you should make them,” he says. “You can compete with someone without notifying them. Being competitive will give you energy to do some shyt that you [didn’t think you could]. I do this to a lot of the culture.” His strategically divisive tactics can routinely cross over into abject bullying. This is par for the course for someone who has publicly humiliated protégés and first broke through in hip-hop by imagining himself robbing various music industry figures. And trolling isn’t just business, it’s also a hobby: He’s prone to attacking people with no corporate motivation at all. He’s so committed to the practice that he even cruelly mocked the hair of one of his own shows’ stars. He’s been widely criticized for it and, in some instances, forced to apologize due to mounting backlash. But even though his hand gets slapped more often these days, he’s still unlikely to adjust his modus operandi because, aside from the lack of material consequences, he’s convinced himself that animus is good.[/quote[

 

[bnew]

NY undercover was similarly music driven as well.

 

[DamienWayne]

He got a lot of network connections doing those straight to dvd movies back in the day

 

[MJ Truth]

How 50 Cent Conquered Television

The 'Power' and 'BMF' producer has built a TV empire the same way he did his rap career: with drive, talent, and plenty of trolling.

www.gq.com

That mentality is wild when you really think about it. But obviously it can be very effective, it’s no different than the way Michael Jordan was talking about in The Last Dance or any other ultra competitive person would say.

 

[010101]

tapped into the culture & filled a wide open lane

fif shyte is the drug dealer street version of tyler perry productions

*

 

[Unfiltered]

NY undercover was similarly music driven as well.

white people look nikka movies, 50 cent just doubled down on street stuff to entertain cacs and it works.

Keep it real, it's a harder version of NY Undercover and other hood tales, same stragety, poor black folks from ghetto, no daddy, gotta fight to get mine.

Nothing new here, ya'll giving dude too much credit, white people like stereotypes, 50 gave them that.

 

[Gwoppo]

I never see anybody talk about this

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Time to stock up on your DVD collections. Curtis Jackson has just inked a $200 million 10-movie deal for his film company, Cheetah Vision. Curtis will be

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I remember that was around the same time he got paid from vitamin water.

Salute cuz dude seem to be doing this shyt his way. He really don’t be giving a fukk about these execs