The Life of a Hunted Man

Curtis spent most of his time with his grandparents, because his mom was out working. "She used to substitute finances for time," 50 remembers. "Every time I seen her, it was somethin' new for me. Christmas every day. She put jewelry on me early."

When Curtis was eight, someone went home with Sabrina, put something in her drink that left her unconscious, closed the windows, turned on the gas and left her for dead. She was found a few days later. "Had to be something to do with the drugs," 50 says. "Her body was all fucked up." She was twenty-three.

He moved in permanently with his grandparents. They tried to steer him away from the street, but he was Sabrina's boy and thus able to hang out with the older guys in the neighborhood. When he was twelve, those guys gave him some cocaine to sell. "They knew nobody was there for me, so they gave me a little three-and-a-half grams and said, 'Here, start hustling,' " he says. "The other kids my age wouldn't even know what to do if you gave 'em a scale and bakin' soda and a pot to cook [crack] up." Of course, at twelve he could hustle only between three and six in the afternoon, when his grandmother thought he was in an after-school program. "I did things in the street, then I was able to adjust and leave that at my doorstep. Once I get in the house, I'm my grandmother's baby. But once I'm outside, I do whatever I gotta do to get by." He can still flip that switch between tough and sweet whenever he likes, moving in a heartbeat from the charm of a soft-spoken choirboy to a teeth-clenched icy grill that would make you throw your wallet at him in fear. He's clear about when and where to employ each one. "I know I gotta be able to separate in order to progress," he says.

In tenth grade at Andrew Jackson High School, 50 was arrested for possession of crack and given juvenile probation. He transferred to another school, but it didn't matter. "I was fashion show in high school. After the first time I got in trouble, I'd pop in when I had something nice to wear and shit." He dropped out after tenth grade. (He got his GED in jail a few years later.) By this time, he was a budding boxer and a rising street icon, a ghetto celeb feared throughout Queens, in control of a crack house and the main drug-selling strip around the way. At eighteen, 50 was making $5,000 a day selling crack and heroin. He bought himself a white Land Cruiser and a white Mercedes-Benz 400 SE. "He's always been known for doing something crazy and wild," says Sha Money XL, a longtime friend and president of 50's indie label, G-Unit Records. "People around Queens be like, 'I know Boo, he was crazy in school. He used to come to school with mad money and guns.' "