50 Cent Making "Before I Self-Destruct" Movie to Accompany Album's December Release

50 Cent's life is like a movie, so it makes sense that he's writing one. The rapper is working on a feature film, Before I Self-Destruct, which is based on his album of the same name. "It's not Purple Rain," 50 says of the flick, which he also directed and produced. "But it was inspired by the actual music." (His album is due out December 9th; 50 plans to release the movie simultaneously.)

The film — which isn't autobiographical — aims to show the complexities of what 50 refers to as "urban life" in a new way: "When [movies] portray certain lifestyles they don't show cause and effect," he says. "But I showed characters under pressure in scenarios where they felt like there were no other options, even though there were." He adds, "There are always options. People just usually start to see them while being incarcerated — for not seeing them in the first place."

As for a soundtrack, tracks from Before I Self-Destruct the album will be missing from the movie. "Then Interscope would automatically have the rights to it, when they had absolutely no ownership of the actual material," says 50, who penned a separate score for the film and recruited unsigned artists to record vocals. But that doesn't mean the tunes are sub-par. "I kept the music up to standards," says 50. "I worked with it until it was right."

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Song Stories

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell | 1974

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.

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