Stars In Their Own Right, The Other Members Of G-Unit Understand The Celestial Order Of The Fiddy Universe

Source: www.thestar.com - Daniel Dale, Staff Reporter

(June 28, 2008) 50 Cent's manager, Laurie Dobbins, looks around the MuchMusic studio. Minutes after finishing a newspaper interview, her client has taken a seat, in a chair to her left, for an interview with a radio station. The second-most-famous member of G-Unit has not. "Where," Dobbins asks, "is Banks?"

That would be Lloyd Banks, a rapper with a Billboard No. 1 album, No. 2 album and No. 3 album to his name. He is, at present, wearing a white-gold-and-diamonds Statue of Liberty pendant, asking a reporter to weigh the gargantuan medallion he has temporarily handed to a friend, and standing, on a riser that makes him about 7 feet tall, maybe 10 steps away from Dobbins – who, for at least a moment, has no idea he is there.

This is Lloyd Banks' life.

If G-Unit were the United Nations, Banks would be, say, Brazil: big and wealthy enough to be important, never important enough to be the centre of attention when 50 Cent's United States is in the building. Banks and the group's third member, Tony Yayo, are stars; 50 Cent is a global icon who owns a 48,500-square-foot house, gets personal audiences with Nelson Mandela, and can have sex using his own name-brand condom.

The funny-because-it's-true possible title of Yayo's upcoming solo album is – actually – I Am 50's Tax Write-Off. Banks is more accomplished than Yayo, who was denied entry into Canada for G-Unit's rare small-venue show at Circa nightclub last Sunday night because of his criminal record. But, despite the money in the bank and the solo hits and the fawning women, Banks, too, understands the celestial order of the universe of 50 Cent Inc.; he understands he would probably not own jewellery heavy enough to keep a struggling chiropractor in business if his boyhood friend had never become an empire unto himself.

"I'm not dumb, deaf or blind," Banks says.

G-Unit's second album, Terminate on Sight, comes out in Canada on Monday. The group's double-platinum 2003 debut, Beg for Mercy, was released nine months after 50 Cent's solo debut became an international sensation.

"I'm definitely appreciative," Banks says. "I'll say one thing to you, the best answer I can give you. When 50 sold 12 million records of Get Rich or Die Tryin', he had two opportunities. One, that the label was presenting to him, was a second album – solo. Because if you just signed an act, and your act sold 12 million records, you're there imagining what kind of numbers he can do on the second project.

"Instead of that, he said, `This is my artist, Lloyd Banks. This is my other artist, Tony Yayo.' He's there, getting a recording deal for our group project. And that was the next album, our group album.

"He's not a selfish person."

He does like money.

Trickle-down rap economics work best when the trickle begins as a flood. 50 Cent, as much a brand as an artist, might have more revenue streams than any entertainer in the world.

The rapper, real name Curtis Jackson III, is wearing his trademark do-rag-and-baseball-cap combination, the diamond-studded cross necklace that once got him branded a "Satanist" by a Christian group, and a white t-shirt. Speaking softly, his eyes fixed on whomever he is speaking with, he manages to be likeable even when he is boasting.

"I was ahead of the opportunities. I always felt like I could do different things. And the energy from the music allowed me to do business," Jackson says, lounging on a couch with Banks. "As opportunities opened up for me, I explored every possibility."

There are, of course, the albums: two Billboard No. 1s, two No. 2, over 20 million sold worldwide in all. But there is also a Right Guard body spray, a "Formula 50" flavour of Vitaminwater, a "Magic Stick" LifeStyles condom named after one of his sultry songs, a video game and its upcoming sequel, a G-Unit record label, clothing line and sneaker line.

And then there are the movies: a 2005 semi-autobiographical film, Get Rich or Die Tryin', the in-production Microwave Park, and Righteous Kill, to be released in September, in which he stars alongside Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.

Jackson's very branding success, however, has challenged the realer-than-thou essence of his brand. Sure, the argument goes, he used to sell cocaine, he was shot in 2000, he was raised in Queens in dire poverty. But, as the 32-year-old says himself in grousing about hassles at the Canadian border, he was convicted for dealing drugs in 1994, "a long time ago." How can he embody the hard-knock streets when he is making $100 million on a single investment deal, as Forbes reports he did when Coca-Cola bought Vitaminwater's parent company, in which he had a minority stake?

"Two weeks ago, I spent time with Em(inem) in Detroit, went to spend the weekend with him at his house. I stayed there," Jackson says. "We had conversations, and the same things you're saying came up – about the financial changes that people are aware of. But it doesn't affect you reflecting on your past. It doesn't affect you writing from a perspective that's real for you. It's art."

And, he says, "regardless of how rich you are, there's no real significance in success. There's a lot of successful people. And you know what they reflect on? They reflect on how far they came. So you keep looking back at what you didn't have.

"Do you understand? You sit there and look back, and creatively, when you sit there, that thought process allows you to go back into a space where you're creating as if you didn't have anything.... If you don't reflect on that, how do you write something that's real?" Jackson asks.

"You have your whole life to make your first album," says Banks. "But you can't get your whole life out in 16 songs."

In conversation, like in song, Jackson's confidence sometimes seems more like arrogance. But, still only about a decade out of poverty, he occasionally appears to forget who he is: the movie shoot with Pacino and De Niro, he says, "was a great experience, because it preps you to deal with big, big, big, big stars." (Jackson ranked 32nd on Forbes' 2007 "Celebrity 100" list, 8th in 2006.) And he speaks with rare candour about his successful effort – a sometimes deceptive effort – to make himself a symbol for both hedonism and street toughness.

The 50 Cent of Jackson's music incessantly drinks and uses drugs; Jackson himself abstains from both. "There's drinking and smoking in the music because – you know why? Because there's 500,000 people who consistently want to get high and listen to a record." When he is not partying or getting women naked, the 50 Cent of Jackson's music talks about murdering his 'hood enemies; Jackson now lives in Mike Tyson's old mansion in a wealthy Connecticut suburb.

"If as much shooting as there is in the music happened in real life," he says, "everybody would be dead in hip-hop. As much as rappers write about those altercations in the music, everybody involved in hip-hop would be dead.... If a person says everything he says on his records is real, they're lying. It's a lie. A rapper's job is to write what sounds good."

Take it from the man who has redefined a rapper's job.