50 Cent Pt. 2: Federal Raids, a Stabbing in the Studio, and a Dead Man’s Game

Curtis Jackson took his name from a stickup man – and then proceeded to play by that dead man’s rules. This episode traces the violent legacy of the original 50 Cent and the rise of 50 Cent the rapper through his feud with Ja Rule, the Lorenzo brothers, Kenneth “Supreme” McGriff, and Murder Inc. Records. This is about how Curtis Jackson a/k/a 50 Cent became a rap king, despite a nine-shot assassination attempt that failed to kill the man—or the myth. For a full list of contributors, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠disgracelandpod.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.disgracelandpod.com/ To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠⁠⁠⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://disgracelandpod.com/membership. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠⁠⁠⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://mailchi.mp/doubleelvis/disgraceland-email-newsletter Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/disgracelandpod/ ⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/@disgracelandpod ⁠⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://twitter.com/disgracelandpod (formerly Twitter) ⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.facebook.com/groups/491024204626127/ ⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok https://tiktok.com/disgracelandpod To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This is exactly right.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 0:44Speaker 02

  Sponsored by GSK, the makers of Extenture. Depamocumab ULAA. If your asthma keeps interrupting, it may be time to try something else. Extenture is an ultra-long-acting prescription maintenance treatment for severe asthma, eosinophilic type, ages 12 and older. It isn't for sudden breathing problems. Extenture is the first and only add-on treatment that can help deliver protection from asthma attacks with two doses a year. Just one dose every six months. That's a lot of time for everything in between. Serious allergic reactions can occur. Get help right away for swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or trouble breathing. Don't change or stop medicines, including steroids, unless told by your doctor. Report if you have a parasitic infection.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  Common cold, sinus infection, inflammation in the nose, flu or fluke-like symptoms, joint pain, or sore throat may occur. Carry on with fewer attacks and ask your doctor about Extenture. Learn more at extenture.com or call 1-833-393-3678.

• 1:44Speaker 03

  This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis.

• 2:04Jake Brennan?

  This is a story about power, about a stick-up kid who became a king, and a crime kingpin who wanted to stay in the game. It's a story about music moguls who wanted to be gangsters, and gangsters who wanted to be music moguls. About reputations in the street, and assumed identities on the stage. About mixtapes, attempted murder, and four FBI raids in one day. This is a story about Kenneth Supreme McGriff, Lorenzo Brothers, Ja Rule, and most importantly, Curtis Jackson, aka 50 Cent. It's a story about great music. Unlike that clip I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music.

• 2:48Jake Brennan?

  That was a preset loop from my Mellotron called "Gold Chain Cha Cha MK1." I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to "Lose Yourself" by Eminem. But why would I play you that specific slice of mom's spaghetti cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number-one song in America on January 3rd, 2003. And that was the day that federal agents raided the offices of Murder Inc. Records, looking for dirty money. Four days before the hip-hop label's main adversary, 50 Cent, released the single "In The Club", which would become the biggest song of the year. On this episode:

• 3:30Jake Brennan?

  Raids, Stick-Up Kids, Crime Kingpins, Music Moguls, Mixtape Wars, Attempted Murder, and Part 2 of our story on 50 Cent. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgrace Land.

• 4:06Jake Brennan?

  If you happen to have a copy of Eric B. and Rakim's classic 1987 debut album Paid in Full, go grab it and turn it over. There on the back cover, you'll see a small picture of nine guys posing outside the Jacob Javits Center in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan. There's Eric B. with the giant gold medallion hanging from his neck, and there's Rakim, AKA The God MC, and yeah, I know, it's crazy, he's actually smiling. And then there's the rest of their crew, real guys, a mixture of rappers, hustlers, and stick-up men, including the kid crouched in the bottom right-hand corner with the red Adidas hat and the thick gold rope chain.

• 4:49Jake Brennan?

  If you know anything about hip-hop, especially the foundational years of the 1980s, that chain will look awfully familiar to you, but more on that in a minute. This kid with the Adidas hat and the gold rope chain, they all called him 50 Cent. But he's not the 50 Cent you're thinking of. That is not Curtis Jackson, who was just 12 years old when Paid in Full, this record that we're talking about with the photo on the back, was released. Incidentally, it was the first record that he ever bought, but I'm getting ahead of myself. This 50 Cent, the OG 50 Cent, the dude on the back of Paid in Full, was a guy named Kelvin Martin, who, despite his vertically-challenged 5'2" frame, was at the time one of the most

• 5:32Jake Brennan?

  prolific and feared stick-up men in Brooklyn. It didn't matter if you were John Dillinger, or Billy the Kid, or Tony fucking Montana. If you were a pimp, a dealer, a doper, a rapper, you could be his sworn enemy or his good friend. If you saw 50 coming, you crossed the street because chances were, you were gonna get robbed. And that's if you were lucky. With a .357 Magnum in one hand, and a Colt .45 in the other, Fifty's reputation preceded him. He had no fear, no regrets. And at only 23 years old, he lived by a code that protected himself above everything and everyone else.

• 6:13Jake Brennan?

  Some said he shot down some of Brooklyn's biggest hustlers in a hail of bullets like a western gunslinger of old, just to make sure that reputation of his was kept spit-shined and airtight. Some even said that he stole the gold rope chain right off of LL Cool J's neck, LL's iconic chain, and that LL was relieved of said chain by the persuasive force of Fifty's twin long-barreled revolvers. Whether or not that particular story is true, it's hard to say. LL Cool J, for one, had his own reputation to maintain. And LL was hard as hell, so LL wasn't saying shit. But plenty of others saw Fifty Cent, again, the original Fifty Cent, pull a piece and live to tell.

• 6:59Jake Brennan?

  On one particular afternoon, every liquor store owner on a long stretch of Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn heard the front door of their shop open and the jingle of that little bell go dingaling, and looked up from behind the counter to see not a customer, but this short stack of menace cocking one pistol and then another, and then that face, not Fifty's actual face, but the face of the Halloween mask that Fifty was wearing. The Count from Sesame Street, or maybe it was a Richard Nixon mask, or something like that. And by that time, the store owner was way ahead of him, popping open the register drawer and handing the masked neighborhood menace all of his cash. But Fifty Cent's exploits, his crimes, his unwavering code in which he got rich or died trying,

• 7:43Jake Brennan?

  again, I'm still talking about the original Fifty Cent, it made him a lot of enemies. It all came to an inevitable end in October of 1987, just months after Caden Fuller hit the shelves. This time, the barrel was aimed at Fifty Cent. Multiple shots fired, one to the back of his head, the plume of gunsmoke, the scattershot rhythm of sneakers tearing ass down several flights of stairs, and then hitting the pavement and fading into the night.

• 8:14Jake Brennan?

  They found 50 Cent bleeding out on the seventh floor stairwell in an Albany Projects building in Brooklyn. He was rushed to the hospital and then moved to the ICU. Four days later, he was dead. Word of 50's death rippled through the streets of Brooklyn, through every liquor store that he ever held up, and to the ears of every person he ever double-crossed. But by the time that word spread one borough over, to Queens, the streets were reckoning with even bigger news. Kenneth "Supreme" McGriff was being released from prison and coming home after serving eight years of a 12-year sentence. "Prin," as he was better known, was a ruthless gangster and the leader of the "Supreme Team,"

• 8:59Jake Brennan?

  a notorious criminal organization and crack cocaine distributor based in Queens. Unlike the last time Prin got out of the joint, this time was going to be different. At least, that's what was believed to be true by the feds, who are continuing to monitor Prin's every move. It was suspected that Supreme had entered the increasingly lucrative world of hip-hop by striking up a relationship with a brand-new record label, and that he was using that label to launder his drug money. Murder Incorporated Records was named after the cold-blooded triggerment of the Syndicate, the infamous organized crime group from the mid-20th century. The one we're talking about, here in Queens, was founded by the Lorenzo brothers, Chris

• 9:41Jake Brennan?

  and Irv, though they wanted to be known around town as Chris and Irv Gotti, a nickname bestowed upon them by none other than Jay-Z. So here's a record label, whose very name, as well as the nicknames of its owners, gave a wink and a nod to gangsters both past and present. And again, this is alleged by the feds, they were being bankrolled by the deep, dirty pockets of the Queens drug lord Kenneth "Supreme" McGriff. Little future Irv Gotti's growing up in Queens, growing up in the shadow of the supposed Prin and Lorenzo partnership, were inspired by the sheer magnitude of this new endeavor, by a record label that wanted to be bigger than the streets, like the rapper Ja Rule, who was one of Murder Inc.'s first and brightest stars.

• 10:28Jake Brennan?

  But not every kid in the city looked up to the Lorenzos and to Prin with that kind of awe. One such outlier was Queens native Curtis Jackson. When it came time for Curtis to level up from hustling on the streets to hustling on the airwaves, he did so not by aligning himself with the likes of Murder Inc., the Lorenzos, Prin, and even Sean Puffy Combs. In the eyes of Curtis Jackson, these guys didn't represent what was real. They weren't the streets. They repped that hubris life. They were all corporate bullshit, so far removed from the streets that they may as well have been living in a castle in the sky. Curtis was the opposite.

• 11:11Jake Brennan?

  He was the fly in the ointment, the nail in the tire, the stick-up kid fucking up your corporate machinations. When it came time to assemble a crew, he called it G-Unit. Not G as in gangster, but as in gorilla, as in a scrappy, independent group that battled much larger, stronger forces. And when it came time to take a stage name, Curtis Jackson didn't look to the Gambino family for inspiration as Chris and Irv Lorenzo did. Instead, Curtis Jackson took up the mantle of the city's ultimate stick-up kid. For his first commercial single, How to Rob, released on Columbia Records in 1999, Curtis Jackson, now 50 Cent, gave a wink and a nod to his new name and his place in the hip-hop

• 11:56Jake Brennan?

  hierarchy. See, the single was included on the soundtrack of the film Into Deep, which starred none other than LL Cool J himself, long since rumored to be one of the victims of the OG 50 Cent, and LL's face was featured on the single's artwork. It was genius. Unlike the late Kevin Martin, the original 50 Cent, the new 50 Cent had no beef with LL Cool J. His beef was with these new corporate gangsters: the Lorenzos, the Prins, and the Puffys. Mostly for the little guy with the rough voice that was now putting Murder Inc. on the map.

• 12:56Speaker 05

  Cash Flow Crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 13:27Speaker 06

  Right now, you can save 70% on SimpliSafe home security. Because what a break-in really costs isn't your home or your valuables. It's the feeling that your home stopped being safe. That's why SimpliSafe doesn't wait for danger to reach your family. We help stop it before it gets close with not just one, but three layers of protection. One, preventing threats outside with smart AI cameras and live US-based agents who intervene to deter intruders before they break in. Two, sounding the alarm at points of entry. And three, agents requesting emergency response when needed. Three layers, all working together to keep your loved ones safe. Plus, you control your privacy and recordings. And with the 60-day money-back guarantee, you can try us risk-free. Monitoring and deterrence plans start around $1 a day.

• 14:11Speaker 06

  Order today to get 70% off a new system with professional monitoring. Save now at simplisafe.com/iheart. SimpliSafe: Ahead of Crime in Real Time. Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com/l licenses for alarm license information.

• 14:27Speaker 00

  Your business operates under pressure, and you need control over your data. But IBM Research shows only 9% of companies have real oversight of their technology. IBM's Open Hybrid Cloud approach is designed to give you visibility with built-in governance tools, data sovereignty, and compliance reporting. It's another way IBM helps you stay in control of your data. Let's create smarter business. IBM. Visit ibm.com to learn more.

• 15:04Jake Brennan?

  It all began with a stick-up. One of Curtis Jackson's, now 50 Cent's, friends flashed his piece and told Ja Rule to fork over his chain. Ja got this rumble deep down in his gut, a feeling that fell somewhere between embarrassed and insulted. What the hell was he gonna do? He slowly peeled the chain from around his neck and handed it over. The next time he saw 50, Ja gave him all kinds of shit. "The fuck?" 50 thought. He didn't rob Ja. It didn't matter. It was 50's guy who did it, so it might as well have been 50 himself. 50 tried the water under the bridge thing, but Ja didn't see a bridge. He saw a wall. And then he started talking shit to anyone who would listen.

• 15:48Jake Brennan?

  And the gist was always the same: 50 Cent was a fake rapper. This is when 50 was on the come-up, when he was trying to establish himself. He couldn't be derailed by some wannabe gangster running his mouth. But if Ja Rule wanted a fight, then a fight was what 50 Cent was gonna give him. Some say that 50 Cent didn't fight fair, but fairness had nothing to do with it. 50 Cent played by the rules of a dead man. March 24th, 2000, midtown Manhattan. The small studio inside the Hit Factory was loud as hell. 50 was rhythmically bobbing his head up and down, lost in the music and letting the deep bass of this track wash over him.

• 16:33Jake Brennan?

  He worked out a verse in his head, the rhymes coalescing into that trademark smooth casual flow. A small but mighty crew looked on, a couple of dudes sitting on the couch, heads nodding in sync, and an engineer working the board. The track ended, and 50 Cent told the engineer to rewind it and start it from the top again, but this time, hit record. 50 was ready. He stepped up to the mic and began to rap his verse while the music played. His debut album for Columbia, Power of the Dollar, was scheduled for release in four months in July. But 50 was already thinking three steps ahead: You had to be prepared if you wanted to blow up without selling out. Take that rap money. Don't shake hands with it.

• 17:19Jake Brennan?

  The song "How to Rob" in particular was all the rage, with emphasis on the word "rage." It was supposed to be a joke, a piece of cutting satire, but more than a few of the forty or so famous rappers and singers the 50 Cent fantasized about taking for all they were worth in his lyrics, they weren't laughing. No one could take a joke. Ja Rule wasn't included in that song, but 50 Cent made sure the Murder Inc. star didn't feel left out. The string of diss tracks that 50 was releasing straight to the streets in advance of his major label debut put Ja Rule in the crosshairs. And then, 50 Cent took aim at the guy that the FBI and NYPD thought was really in control of Murder Inc.'s

• 18:02Jake Brennan?

  purse strings. One of the songs from 50's upcoming Power of the Dollar album, "Ghetto Koran," leaked and soon it could be heard pouring from speakers throughout the Five Burrows. The track aired the dirty laundry of the Supreme team and of Kenneth Prue McGiff, and this was something that you just didn't do.

• 18:23Jake Brennan?

  The door to the small Hit Factory studio flew open and three men walked inside: Ja Rule, Chris Lorenzo, and another Murder Inc. rapper, Ramel Gill, aka Black Child. They weren't there to check out the new shit 50 was working on. 50 stopped rapping right away and took a step back as the uninvited visitors came at him fast. If only he had some of that Kelvin Martin hardware on him. Someone hit the lights and the whole room descended into chaos. 50's boys were up off the couch, up from the engineer's chair, jumping into the fray. Fists swung in the darkness. Lorenzo, or Ja, someone was coming at 50 now. Knuckles out. So 50 Cent retaliated, wild, quick stabs of self-preservation. Then the scuffle of pair of hands grabbed one of the speakers from the top of the recording

• 19:08Jake Brennan?

  console and lobbed it through the air. It slammed Lorenzo right in the head. He screamed in pain, and also because it pissed him off. The blood gushed down the side of his face. Fifty Cent stumbled, tried to catch his breath. Black Child flashed a knife. Fifty saw it gleam in the darkness, like it was winking at him. This all-knowing, all-seeing beacon of impending doom about to all fuck up. Black Child lunged forward, jabbed, and sunk the knife right into Fifty's chest. Fifty howled, the pain consumed him. Breathing in, breathing out, it hurt like fucking hell. He slumped to the floor, teeth clenched, eyes squeezed tight,

• 19:48Jake Brennan?

  while Lorenzo, Black Child, and Ja Rule scurried out the same way they'd come in.

• 19:58Jake Brennan?

  Minutes later, Fifty Cent was in the back of an ambulance racing down the streets of Midtown to St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital, where doctors treated his gaping chest wound, along with a partially collapsed lung.

• 20:12Jake Brennan?

  Two months later, after getting back on his feet, Fifty Cent was shot nine times by an unknown would-be assassin and nearly killed.

• 20:24Jake Brennan?

  It was the totality of these two incidents, happening so quickly, back-to-back, that cemented Fifty Cent not only as authentic, but dangerous. So dangerous, and so hot, that Columbia Records got cold feet. He may have survived those nine bullets he took outside his grandmother's house in Queens, but he wouldn't survive his first relationship with a major label. Columbia pulled Power of the Dollar with no intention to release it, or any other Fifty Cent album for that matter. And right at the moment when he was supposed to be blowing up by executing that stick-up strategy, by taking that rap money, instead, Fifty Cent's Dead Man Game left him dead in the water.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 21:46Speaker 06

  Right now, you can save 70% on SimpliSafe home security. Traditional security systems only alert you after a break-in has already happened, and that's too late. SimpliSafe is changing that.

• 21:59Speaker 07

  Stop. This is SimpliSafe. You're being monitored and recorded. I'm requesting police dispatch.

• 22:05Speaker 06

  Using the Outdoor Camera Series 2 and Advanced AI Alerts, our live US-based agents identify potential threats on your property and help deter them. So the intruder never gets into your house. The break-in never happens. Because we don't just alert, we stop crime before it starts. SimpliSafe monitoring and deterrence plans start around $1 a day with no long-term contracts. Order today to get 70% off a new system with professional monitoring. Save now at simplisafe.com/iHeart. SimpliSafe: Ahead of Crime in Real Time. Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com/l licenses for alarm license information.

• 22:47Speaker 08

  Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. Imagine your business depends on a system you didn't build and don't fully control. For years, it works perfectly. It's fast, reliable, affordable. So over time, more and more of your operations rely on it. Then one day, the terms change. What once felt flexible now feels difficult to leave. Moving to another provider or bringing those capabilities back under your own control could take years, cost millions, and disrupt the business in the process. That's the challenge of digital sovereignty. Businesses today rely on all sorts of third-party

• 23:28Speaker 08

  systems: cloud platforms, data pipelines, AI models, software tools. Most days, these systems operate quietly in the background. But when something changes, like costs go up or rules shift, organizations are forced to confront how much control and flexibility they actually have. So to understand the challenge up close, I traveled to Paris to speak with IBM's Ana Paula Assis and Axe as CIO, Giovanni Doniello, two people who think about these questions every day. Hear the full conversation at ibm.com/smarttalks or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 24:20Jake Brennan?

  Murder Inc. made sure to hit 50 Cent while he was down. Irv Gotti went live on Hot 97's The Star and Buck Wow Morning Show. Irv told all in New York that 50 Cent had gone soft, that 50 had turned tail, that 50 Cent was a rat. So 50 Cent, you're never gonna believe this, went and got himself an order of protection against Irv Gotti and Ja Rule. This is what Irv Gotti told Hot 97, that 50 Cent was essentially acting like a little bitch. That's him talking, not me. Also him talking. A guy does that, he makes himself all cozy with the NYPD, that guy is not authentic. And that guy is essentially a fucking snitch, per Irv Gotti's thinking. But 50 Cent was no snitch. Irv

• 25:05Jake Brennan?

  Gotti was only half-right, whether he knew it or not. There was an order of protection, but it had been issued by the NYPD on behalf of 50 Cent. And no matter how much Irv Gotti and Chris Lorenzo and Prem tried to discredit their rival, their strategy continued to backfire, only adding to 50 Cent's suddenly larger-than-life profile, which in turn was how one of his mixtapes ended up in Eminem's Walkman, and then to a million-dollar deal with M and Dr. Dre's hip-hop empire. And so, as 50 Cent's debut album was once again back in the pipeline and being prepped for an early 2003 release, he doubled back to respond to the guys who had left him for dead and were now trying to bury him alive.

• 25:49Jake Brennan?

  To be clear here, I'm not talking about the guy who shot him nine times, as 50 would make known on the track "Many Men Wish Death" from his debut album, Get Rich or Die Trying. The shooter was a stick-up kid from Fork Green named Darryl "Homo" Baum, who was killed just weeks after he tried to ice 50 Cent. When I say left him for dead and we're now trying to bury him, I'm talking about the shit that went down at the Hit Factory and the subsequent slandering of 50 Cent's name on the airwaves. But as usual, 50 is three steps ahead of his antagonists. Just weeks after Irv Gotti called 50 a snitch, in December of 2002, 50 Cent and his rap trio, G-Unit, released an independent mixtape titled "The Future Is Now."

• 26:32Jake Brennan?

  One of its standout tracks was "I Smell Pussy", and it flipped Irv Gotti's script by calling out Irv, Ja Rule, and the guy who stabbed 50 Cent, Black Child, by their names. As in, "I smell pussy. Is that you, Irv? I smell pussy. Is that you, Ja Rule?" 50 Cent didn't go after Primm on this particular track, but the notorious crack kingpin was having enough problems of his own. Earlier in the year, Supreme had pleaded guilty to a weapons possession charge, and he was currently out on bail and awaiting sentencing. And the shocking recent murder of Run DMC's Jam Master Jay had brought more unwanted attention from the cops and some of Jay's close friends, friends like 50 Cent, who was mentored by Jam Master Jay, they weren't going out of their way to say that Primm

• 27:16Jake Brennan?

  hadn't had anything to do with the shooting. And so as G-Unit's "I Smell Pussy" kept the cold December streets of New York City red hot, Primm was laying low down in Miami Beach. He checked into the Lowe's Hotel under an alias, paid with cash, and then quietly slipped into a room with walls as white as he outfits at a Sean Combs Labor Day party.

• 27:38Jake Brennan?

  But his quiet reprieve didn't last long. As Primm sat there alone, his hotel room door was busted down from the outside with a bang. Splintered wood paved the way for FBI agents in their trademark windbreakers. They grabbed Primm's arms and twisted them behind his back, locking his wrists and cuffs. "What the fuck was it this time?" Primm shook his head. He didn't know who did Jam Master Jay, but it wasn't him. Now, it was the feds' turn to shake their heads. They didn't care. They weren't here for that. They had Primm on another weapons charge, one from a few years back, when he brought a machine gun to a shooting range. What's this? One of the agents wanted to know.

• 28:22Jake Brennan?

  We're rockin' and rollin' tonight, are we, Prem? As he said it, he was holding up a baggie of Viagra and another baggie full of ecstasy that were found right there on the nightstand next to a Murder Inc. pager. And that's where the feds were headed next. Straight out of this Miami safe house and back to New York, where not even a week later, the record company that they believe Prem bankrolled was about to be taken down. January 3rd, 2003. Manhattan. Early. The elevator doors opened on the 29th floor of the Worldwide Plaza Building on 8th Avenue. The surge of federal agents and NYPD detectives came flooding out, vests strapped tight, weapons locked and loaded, warrant in hand.

• 29:06Jake Brennan?

  They crashed through the front door of Murder Inc.'s corporate offices and began to turn the place upside down. They seized computers, boxes of files, two-way pagers, anything they could use to trace the dirty money back to Prem. Cut to New Jersey, where more FBI agents and NYPD officers were raiding the house belonging to Cynthia Brent, Murder Inc.'s accountant. And then, to Westchester County, New York, Irv Gotti's house. Raided. And then, Wexford Terrace in Queens, the home of Joe Reagan, one of Prem's longtime associates. Raided. All four places were raided simultaneously by the feds that morning, along with a fifth location, Chris Gotti's apartment at an undisclosed location.

• 29:51Jake Brennan?

  And then, with an affidavit filed with the US Attorney's Office, the United States government officially made the claim that Prem was the "true owner" of Murder Inc. And that he provided the Lorenzos and the label with muscle, aka threats, violence, and intimidation. Four days later, while Ja Rule's record label was trying to peel the G-men off their backs, 50 Cent pulled that G-Unit guerrilla move of his, swooping in and taking that rap money. He hit Murder, Inc., where it really hurt, on the charts and in the minds and hearts of the record-buying public. His smash single, "In The Club," was released on January 7, 2003.

• 30:33Jake Brennan?

  It spent nine consecutive weeks at the top of the Billboard Top 100. And during its time in the number-one slot, as quick as a Kelvin Martin liquor store stick-up, it set a Billboard record as the most listened-to song in radio history.

• 31:14Jake Brennan?

  2005, Brooklyn. Chris and Irv Lorenzo sat inside a federal courthouse, watching nervously as one of Prin's former close confidants walked slowly to the witness stand. The brothers were on trial for laundering more than $1 million in drug proceeds through their Murder, Inc. record label. In total, nine individuals and two corporations have been charged with everything from racketeering to cocaine, heroin, and crack trafficking to homicide. Chris and Irv Lorenzo considered it a win early on when a judge granted their request to try them separately from Prin, who they continued to maintain was in their orbit for street cred only, but did not contribute financially to their business.

• 31:56Jake Brennan?

  If they were guilty of anything, they said, it was guilt by association, plain and simple. But even though Prin was not in the courtroom with them, you could nevertheless feel his shadow casting a pall over the proceedings. The allegations, the charges that the Lorenzos were facing, were serious, career-ending, life-altering charges.

• 32:17Jake Brennan?

  And so, as they watched while former Prin associate Joe Reagan sat down in the hot seat next to the judge, their pulses quickened. The prosecuting attorney asked John Reagan if he could recall the events of one day in particular, some five years earlier. May 24th, 2000. Reagan nodded his head. He had a mind like a steel trap. He remembered that day like it was yesterday. Reagan was no longer as close with Prem as he'd once been. And with the feared crime mogul now on the hook for a laundry list of offenses, including two murder-for-hire homicides, Reagan really didn't care if what he said incriminated his one-time ally.

• 32:59Jake Brennan?

  So Reagan began to talk. He recalled how Prem came by his auto garage in Brooklyn that afternoon. Prem had come all the way from Queens, and he had two other guys with him. Now, the reason that they went all the way to Brooklyn in the first place was to buy a bunch of stuff from stores. They were on a shopping spree, you could say. And it's not that Prem was in a shopping mood or anything. He just wanted receipts. Pieces of paper to prove that he had been in Brooklyn during the afternoon and not in Queens where just an hour before nine bullets ripped through 50 Cent's body. But of course, Prem had actually been in South Jamaica, Queens that day, according to John Reagan's recollection.

• 33:41Jake Brennan?

  Reagan testified that Prem told him they'd just come from Queens where 50 was shot coming out of his grandmother's house and then left to bleed out, just like the OG 50 Cent Kelvin Martin, how he had bled out on that seventh-floor stairwell some 13 years earlier. Now, John Reagan further said that while Prem ordered the hit, that he hadn't pulled the trigger. But that was one of the other two guys who showed up at Reagan's garage that day, and that dude's name was Robert Sun Lyons. Again, this is alleged by John Reagan. But wait, you're thinking. Jake, you told us earlier that 50 Cent ID'd Darryl "Hama" Baum as his shooter in a song.

• 34:22Jake Brennan?

  Yes, that's correct. And it's also true that the primary book that we used for researching this episode, Ethan Brown's excellent Fat Cat, Fifty Cent and the Rise of the Hip-Hop Hustler, also claimed quite definitively that the shooter was indeed Hama. The distinction of who the trigger man was exactly may not really matter in the end, because the big bombshell here in John Reagan's testimony was that Prem was the one who'd been behind the attempted assassination of Fifty Cent. It was not some random stick-up kid. It wasn't some low-key street beef or whatever. It was the mastermind of a New York criminal empire, the chief

• 35:02Jake Brennan?

  of the Supreme Team, the alleged muscle of a record label with which Fifty Cent had been publicly feuding. So to recap, Fifty Cent claimed Hama was the shooter in his song "Many Men Wish Death." At the Lorenzo Brothers 2005 trial, John Reagan testified that Robert Sun Lyons pulled the trigger on behalf of Prem, who sat by and watched as Fifty Cent was sprayed with gunfire. Now, this was one man's testimony. This was talk from a guy who, we can assume, had fallen from grace and fallen out of favor with Prem at some point. And so who knows? Perhaps John Reagan had something to gain from saying

• 35:45Jake Brennan?

  something like this. And perhaps that gain was just to hurt Prem or to hurt the Lorenzos. It's important to note that, like many aspects of Prem's relationship with Murder Incorporated, this particular allegation has never been proven in a court of law. But here's the thing. Before the jury could hear John Reagan's story, the defense attorney, the Lorenzo's attorney, made this argument to the judge, and I quote, "This Fifty Cent artist is at the height of his popularity, and this is an explosive issue. It's fundamentally unfair. I believe this to be outcome determinative. This would be like a plot to assassinate Bob Dylan." Unquote.

• 36:26Jake Brennan?

  In other words, people would lose their minds if they knew that one of the biggest leaders of New York City organized crime, Kenneth McGriff, aka Supreme, aka Prem, put out a hit on one of the biggest rappers in the world, that it would be a quote-unquote "explosive" issue, and that the public wouldn't be able to handle it. So the judge did not allow the jury to actually hear this explosive testimony from Joe Reagan implicating Kenneth Supreme McGriff, aka Prem, as the mastermind behind the assassination attempt on 50 Cent. Less than two weeks later, on December 2, 2005, Chris and Irv Lorenzo were acquitted of the federal charges against them.

• 37:11Jake Brennan?

  But despite this, their reputation was already damaged by the criminal allegations and by their ties to Prem, so much so that their careers and their murder ink label were never the same again. Their beef with 50 Cent was never really squashed, and in the years that followed, Chris Lorenzo co-founded Ad Ventures, a digital distribution platform aimed to give artists more control, and Irv Lorenzo eventually went into TV production before suffering a massive stroke and dying in early 2025. Kenneth Supreme McGriff, aka Prem, he on the other hand, despite the jury not hearing the testimony from Joe Reagan incriminating him as the one who ordered the hit on rapper 50 Cent back in 2005, was not so lucky.

• 37:54Jake Brennan?

  In February of 2007, following his own trial for murder conspiracy and drug trafficking, Kenneth Supreme McGriff was sentenced to life in prison without parole. During his trial, he was asked by prosecutors about his role in the attempted assassination of 50 Cent. Prem straight-up denied any and all involvement and said that the government and the media made the whole thing bigger than it actually was.

• 38:21Jake Brennan?

  But to the hip hop community at large, the Prin 50 beef was an iconic conflict which shaped rap music in the early 2000s and helped define who 50 Cent was. Later that same year, as Prin began serving his life sentence, 50 Cent released his third studio album. It debuted at number two on the Billboard album chart, and within a month and a half, it sold over 1 million copies. 50 Cent called the album Curtis, perhaps a surprisingly vulnerable move to acknowledge the person he was before he took a dead man's name as his own. A dead stick-up man who led a nasty, brutish, and short life of disgrace.

• 39:05Jake Brennan?

  Unlike 50 Cent, who's still breathing and who took that money without ever shaking hands with it. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgrace Land.

• 39:29Jake Brennan?

  All right. Thanks for rolling with me in this 50 Cent Part Two episode of Disgrace Land. Apple Podcast listeners, make sure you have auto downloads turned on. Listen, I want to know from you guys, 617-906-6638. Which hip hop star would you most want to sit down and have a drink with, chill out with, talk with, ask questions to, share some stories? Is it 50 Cent? Who is it? Somebody else? Let me know. It could be any hip hop star from any era. Not looking for rock stars, not looking for pop stars here. Looking specifically for hip hop stars. Which one would you most want to hang out with? Let me know, 617-906-6638. Call me with your answers, leave a voicemail, send me a text, and you might hear yourself on the next episode of the after-party coming up right after this. At Disgrace Land Pod on the socials if you want to get at me on anything else.

• 40:14Jake Brennan?

  [email protected]. I gotta take off. Here comes some credits. Disgrace Land was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgrace Land All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com/membership. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook @disgracelandpod and on YouTube at youtube.com/atdisgracelandpod. Rockerola.

• 40:56Speaker 09

  He's a bad, bad man.

• 41:00Speaker 01

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 41:31Jake Brennan?

  Hey guys, time to dust off your detective skills while unwinding in the Caribbean on Virgin Voyages' second true crime voyages. Backed by popular demand, this five-night, adults-only escape set sail March 20, 2027, to Grand Turk in the Beach Club at Bimini. The difference between this year and last will be that I will be on the cruise this year, along with Zeph, and he and I will be taping a live version of Disgrace Land, along with podcast hosts from Exactly Right's Buried Bones, Podcast of the Year Award winners Wisecrack, and other fan favorites. Get on this cruise with us, guys, and enjoy live podcast recordings, behind-the-scenes storytelling, exclusive meet-and-greets, and immersive

• 42:12Jake Brennan?

  true crime programming throughout this one-of-a-kind voyage. Head over to www.virginvoyages.com/truecrime to secure your spot.

• 42:22Speaker 02

  Sponsored by GSK, the makers of Extenture, Depamocumab ULAA. If your asthma keeps interrupting...

• 42:29Speaker 02

  It may be time to try something else. Extensure is an ultra-long-acting prescription-maintenance treatment for severe asthma, eosinophilic type, ages 12 and older. It isn't for sudden breathing problems. Extensure is the first and only add-on treatment that can help deliver protection from asthma attacks with two doses a year. Just one dose every six months. That's a lot of time for everything in between. Serious allergic reactions can occur. Get help right away for swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or trouble breathing. Don't change or stop medicines, including steroids, unless told by your doctor. Report if you have a parasitic infection. Common colds, sinus infection, inflammation in the nose, flu or fluke-like symptoms, joint pain or sore throat may occur.

• 43:12Speaker 02

  Carry on with fewer attacks and ask your doctor about Extensure. Learn more at Extensure.com or call 1-833-393-3678.