Is 50 Cent the Lebron James of Hip Hop? 6 Reasons The Comparison Isn’t as Far-Fetched as You Think

Preface: some weird synchronicities happened at the Super Bowl last night.

1. 50 Cent was a surprise guest though most of us assumed he would be.
2. The first commercial after 50 & Companies performance was this LeBron CGI commercial.
3. One of our favorite IG Hip Hop Accounts posted this clip of LeBron singing along to 50’s performance specifically.

Super Bowl aside (or included?) we now proceed with the regularly scheduled article…

If we were to compare Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson and LeBron James the way Hip Hop artists are usually compared to NBA stars we would write a rap and drop a line about how we (rapper) are (adjective) the way that (NBA player) is (similar to that adjective from earlier) when he plays basketball.

“Ja Morant I’m on my grizzly”, so to speak.

But 50 Cent is not your standard rapper, and Lebron James is exceptional even for NBA players who get shout-outs in rap songs.

So instead, let’s compare them in the ways that make them as similar to one another as possible.

It’s easier than you might think.

The Similarities

To say 50 Cent’s career as a Hip Hop artist is as successful as Lebron James’ career as a basketball player, is probably not accurate.

But it’s less inaccurate than it may first appear.

Success in music and sports are measured very differently.

If we have French Montana to reference – and we do – making it in the rap game is harder than making it into the NBA.

Though Montana’s back of the napkin math was sketchy at best, the path of a musician, specifically a Hip Hop artist – if they are to ever make money – is arguably more dependent on early success, and that success, once attained is arguably more difficult to sustain, than that of a professional athlete.

Becoming – and staying – relevant in the rap game is a much more precarious proposition than even a career in the NBA.

As Chris Lighty once said, “the one thing about Hip Hip is, like, if you make the wrong move, your career is done. It’s a blood sport”.

You have a bad game? You get out there and you keep shooting.

Going through a slump? Rest up, recharge.

You have a bad video? Bad song? Weird album cover? In Hip Hop, your career is over.

With that in mind, let’s look at the odd similarities between 50’s and LeBron’s impact.

1. The Debut

Both LeBron and 50 debuted – in their respective versions of the majors – in 2003.

LeBron’s debut NBA game was October 30, 2003 against the Sacramento Kings.

Get Rich or Die Tryin’ was released on February 3rd, 2003.

But what connected them before their professional release dates was…

2. The Hype

The NYC mixtape game was 50’s pre-professional arena, American High School Basketball was LeBron’s.

LeBron’s High School games were televised on ESPN. And this is 2002 ESPN, before streaming, before cord-cutting. A lot of people were watching and ESPN said, “let’s film the 17-year-old from Akron”.

While LeBron was getting hype no High School player had to-date, 50 was coming up in the mixtape world to the point where a White kid in Milwaukee had heard of him.

“How to Rob” was 50’s version of LeBron’s televised High School games:

1. It the first time most of America saw/heard the phenomenon they had previously only heard about via word of mouth and,
2. it was America’s glimpse of the phenom while they were still in their pre-professional phase.

Which leads to similarity #3.

3. They Lived Up To It, Where Most Don’t

There were a lot of “next big things” coming from the New York mixtape game for a while. Remember Saigon? Remember the hype around mixtape Papoose?

But there were also a lot “The Next Jordan”‘s.

Complex and The Ringer may disagree over a name or two, but the list of the pre-LeBron “Next Jordan”‘s is usually some mix of:

• Harold Miner
• Grant Hill
• Jerry Stackhouse
• Penny Hardaway
• Kobe Bryant
• Vince Carter

This is not a list of failures. But it is a list of Not-Jordans, all Kobe debate aside.

Any kid would dream of being on a list of Not-Jordans. A lot of hyped-up MCs did pretty well too.

Fabolous was once the next voice of New York. Charles Hamilton seemed to carry Harlem on his back for a summer.

Most rappers – hell, most musicians – would consider themselves successful if they had a Charles Hamilton career. A Fabolous career is beyond most imaginations.

The one caveat between 50’s success compared to other mixtape rappers, and LeBron’s success vis-à-vis the NBA, is that 50 was more or less at the beginning of the mixtape era in Hip Hop, (which thrived only after the availability of burnable CDs became commonplace) where LeBron landed decades after the NBA had become “The NBA” on the back of the Lakers/Celtics rivalry in the 80’s, and Jordan-being-Jordan throughout the 90’s.

But that doesn’t change the fact that no rapper from New York has blown up like 50, since 50.

No one should have Jordan-level expectations set of them. History has proven it unrealistic to expect a Michael Jordan every 3 years, or even every 30.

I love Fabolous, and his contributions to the culture can’t be discounted, but like a Vince Carter, the expectations were set unfairly high for him.

The difference then, with 50 and Lebron, is that when they were being discussed as next-owners of the mantle, they snatched it and ran.

Get Rich or Die Tryin’ is still one of the most successful rap albums of all time. It sold 8.1 million copies and as of 2013 – record sales haven’t exactly increased since 2013 – 50’s debut was the 10th best-selling Hip Hop album of all-time, per Complex.

While Lebron didn’t win a ring in his first year – musicians career’s are even more dependent on early success – he never dropped the bag. If the bag was critics calling was him the next Jordan, LeBron has always been in the conversation.

4. Baggy Pants

Both 50 Cent and LeBron wore impossibly baggy trousers, “which was the fashion at the time”, to quote Abraham Simpson.

I mean, both 50 Cent AND LeBron James wearing baggy clothes, what are the odds?

5. Diversify Your Bonds

Both 50 and LeBron have successfully developed empires outside of their primary professional industry.

50’s accomplishments include:

• When Coca-Cola bought Energy (the Vitamin Water parent company) in May 2007, 50’s stake netted him $100 million. – Business Insider
• The Power universe on Starz. Power ran for 6 seasons and has 3 – yes, 3 – current spin-off series with a 4th rumored to begin early 2022.
• G-Unit albums and clothing line.
• Video games, movies, music videos

LeBron’s HBO show The Shop is unlike any media any sports star has ever produced. His SpringHIll Company is valued at $725M and has received a round of high-end investments:

Private equity firm RedBird was joined by US sportswear brand Nike, video game company Epic Games and Fenway Sports Group (FSG), which owns Major League Baseball’s (MLB) Boston Red Sox and English soccer club Liverpool.

ProSportsMedia

6. The Culture and My Experience

Ultimately, it is early-2000’s American culture, where 50 and LeBron’s impacts are the most profound and most similar.

I was in my rookie year of college in the Fall semester of 2002. Some call this season “Freshman”.

Of all the terrible memories of my first year of college (don’t feel too bad if your college experience isn’t what you were sold, Corona kids, disappointment is the most universal of all college experiences) two moments stand out:

1.       Gathering around our friend’s dorm room TV to watch one of LeBron’s High School games

2.       The cooks in our food hall playing “Wanksta” so loud from the kitchen we could dance to it in the lunch line if we wanted.

LeBron and 50 hit the culture at the same time and immediately imprinted themselves on a generation.

They were at the forefront of music and sports. For a generation of young men – especially those who would never use the term – they were fashion icons. 50 and LeBron defined the early 2000’s while we were living them, and they define how they’re remembered now.

This was long before the time of skinny jeans, CBD, and mental health memes. A lot of us young men had only our crossover, our baggy jeans, and our ingestion of marijuana to hang our papier-mâché-fragile masculinity on.The baggy clothes, the swagger, the uber-machismo posturing that could be backed up by talent: they were the goal posts for a generation who found themselves in an uncertain new-world following 9/11.

Counterpoint: But Jay-Z Though?

If we’re simply talking numbers, LeBron’s career probably more closely resembles Jay-Z’s: sustained success at the highest level for somewhere around the 2-decade mark, with multiple chapmionships along the way.

But two decades of relevance in Hip Hop is so far outside the margins of that industry that if Jay-Z hadn’t done it, it would be unimaginable.

Two decades in the NBA has been done before, and it’s getting to be almost common place for the most elite stars to hit their late-teens in the league as developments in nutrition, load-management, and recovery therapies, continue to develop.

If anything, Jay-Z is more like Wilt Chamberlain? He’s so outside the box for what people ever expected of a person in his industry, in his era, it changes what we think of as possible in that field.

They invented the 3-second rule because of Wilt. He is still the only player to score over 4,000 points in a season; the only to score 100 in one game. Jay-Z invented the rapper-turned-billionaire. From an era where careers in Hip Hop never seemed to make it out of the decades they began in, Jay is going on his 4th. If he dropped an album tomorrow it would be world-wide news.

Legacy in sports and music can be argued and debated endlessly, which is part of what makes them so fun.

But if we are looking at who has the most impact on a certain moment in time, it is impossible to ignore the similarities between 50 and LeBron.

They had immense expectations heaped upon them at the turn of the millenia, a time when basketball and Hip Hop were intertwined at the forefront of American culture. They both lived up to those expectations which is to say they exceeded them, like no one else from their generation.