50 Cent on Maintaining His Fitness: 'Strong Is Not All Muscle — It's About Being Mentally and Physically Strong'

50 Cent's fitness inspiration came from an unlikely place: the attempt on his life.

“I’m … working out to get myself stronger, ’cause who’s to say you’re not gonna get hit again?” said the rapper, recalling his thinking in Men’s Health's new Hip-Hop Is Life issue.

After being shot nine times in 2000 — and then returning with a famously defined physique — 50 Cent, (born Curtis Jackson) seemed almost superhuman.

Beyond his perseverance, his bluntness — about the state of hip hop and other rappers’ skills, plus his long-standing friendship with Eminem — helped propel the Queens, New York, native to A-list status. He dominated the charts shortly after releasing his 2003 smash “In Da Club,” the lead single from his record-breaking debut album, Get Rich or Die Tryin'.

He also couldn’t help but compare himself to another shirtless performer —  D’Angelo, whose 2000 “(Untitled) How Does It Feel” video showed off his body.

“I’m like, ‘Wait, what’s that?! Oh, nah, that’s important!’” 

So 50 Cent, now 48, hit the gym — and it became such an important part of his life that he incorporated it into the video for “In Da Club.”

“I put the gym in the middle of the video because, to me, that’s where I looked the coolest,” the rapper tells Men’s Health. “That’s where I learned strong is not all muscle; it’s about being mentally and physically strong.”

But in his new career as an actor and a producer — he helmed and starred in the Starz smash Power, appears in the new installment of the Expend4bles franchise, and has a true-crime podcast, Surviving El Chapo  — he says he's had to change his appearance for roles. 

While he caused a stir on social media appearing a bit more thick than usual at the Super Bowl in 2022, he took took it in stride.

“I’m bigger than I was in the original video [for 'In da Club'], but damn, I ain’t fat,” he said, adding with a joke, “After the Super Bowl was over, I’ve been hungry since.”

And as Jackson tells Men’s Health, “I put more weight on for the role on the ABC show [For Life]. I was eating everything to get as big as possible. Because it was a jailhouse [role], so it didn’t matter if I wasn’t cut up.”

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But as he hits the road for the Final Lap Tour — his last tour as 50 Cent, which commemorates the 20th anniversary of Get Rich or Die Tryin’ — he says he’s aiming to get back into performing shape. 

“When I’m in top shape, I’m not sweating until song four,” he says. As for other rappers who might not be as fit? “They sweatin’ on the second verse. Like, ‘You just got out there and you soaking wet!’”

He admits, “It’s more important to get back in shape now than it was then,” he tells Men’s Health. 

“Simply because I’m getting older. It’s harder.”

The September 2023 issue of Men’s Health — the Hip-Hop Is Life Issue — hits newsstands on August 8.