50 Cent Brought the Biggest Hip-Hop Tour of the Year to Dallas With His 'Final Lap'

In the 20 years since 50 Cent released his debut album Get Rich or Die Tryin’, he's remained omnipresent through film, TV and music. The protégé of Dr. Dre and Eminem is an icon from the time of the early 2000s, and the numbers don’t lie: GRODT sold 872,000 copies in its first week, and 12 million worldwide by the end of 2003; it currently sits at nine-times platinum. The album laid the foundation for the 50 Cent/G-Unit empire, building it brick by brick as he expanded from music to brand partnerships, taking over television with his Starz series Power.

The career of 50 Cent, as business mogul and rapper, remains the blueprint for how to preserve a catalog with an audience that grows with you.

The Final Lap tour is a celebration of GRODT’s 20th anniversary and 50 years of hip-hop. The global tour kicked off on July 21 in Salt Lake City, and a European leg starts on Sept. 28 in Amsterdam. Additional dates will be announced in Australia, New Zealand, Asia and Europe. If this is really the South Jamaica, Queens-bred rapper’s final lap before retirement, it is easily the most significant hip-hop tour of the year.

50 Cent recently became a Texan and now resides in Houston. After stopping at home on Thursday, he and his openers, Busta Rhymes and Jeremih, came to Dallas on Aug. 25 to perform at Dos Equis Pavilion, enduring 100-degree weather. They brought their classics, and through showmanship and a lot of pyrotechnics they raised the the temperature all the more. The last time 50 Cent came to the area was to promote his Champagne and cognac, so a performance by him in Texas is rare.

Despite the heat, some fans were dedicated to wearing bulletproof vests, a reminder of 50 Cent’s career beginnings, when he was shot nine times.

It was unfortunate that Jeremih opened the show at around 6:30 p.m., as fans were still finding their seats. His attempt to warm up the crowd with Late Nights hits “Oui” and “Don’t Tell Em” were not met with the same reaction he might've gotten later in the evening. It was the same for Busta Rhymes, his hypeman Spliff Star and DJ Scratch, working the crowd a bit more than usual to loosen them up. It took a few retries of “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See” and “I Know What You Want” to get the energy level to Busta’s liking. Before getting into his new single “Beach Ball” featuring Bia, he shared an update.

“My new album is executive-produced by myself," he said. "It’s also executive-produced by Swizz Beatz. It’s also executive-produced by Timbaland. And last but not least, it is also executive-produced by Pharrell. So just know I’m coming to fuck shit up for the rest of 2023.”

Busta will always be good live, even if the crowd can’t quite sync up with him. Eventually, the Dallas crowd got it together for his verse of Chris Brown’s “Look at Me Now,” moving him to say that what you see in the video and hear on the record is what you get live.

“We are the holy, sacred and the pure,” Busta said. “That’s the reason why we don’t use special effects … because we are the special effects motherfucker!”

These words set up “Break Ya Neck” perfectly, but once again, the crowd lost momentum when Spliff Star “turned down” the volume of Busta’s voice as he was rapping to let the audience rap his lyrics.

Then came a last chance for redemption. With Le Chemin Du Roi Champagne in hand (courtesy of 50 Cent), Busta and Spliff Star celebrated several things — 20 years of GRODT, 25 years of Busta’s second album When Disaster Strikes…, and being on cloud nine after winning the Lifetime Achievement award at the 2023 BET Awards — before instructing the crowd to jump (jump) for "Pass the Courvoisier, Part II."

The excitement of Busta’s set had deflated after the long wait for 50 Cent to hit the stage. This could’ve been a better time slot for Jeremih to perform, creating more anticipation for Fif’s arrival by doing some of their joint songs, such as “Still Think I’m Nothing” and “Power Powder Respect.” Finally, at around 8:45 p.m., the lights went dark. The four pillars on stage showed the silhouette of 50 Cent, the shadowy figure disappearing into smoke and reappearing at another pillar until all the pillars had filled with smoke. At center stage, two sides of a box slowly closed together, then filled with smoke. Was magic about to happen?

The box opened and the smoke cleared. 50 Cent, mic in hand, had arrived.

He started with “I’m on Some Shit,” a G-Unit Radio 25 – Sabrina’s Baby Boy song that if you know, you know, teasing a night of B-side songs and deep cuts of this caliber. From there, it was just 50 Cent, the entertainer with chart-topping hits who just performed at the Super Bowl last year. There were wardrobe changes (one of them being a custom-made Astros jersey for the “Houston rapper”), G-Unit dancers, a live band and his hypemen Tony Yayo and Uncle Murda. This was not only a journey through the best of 50 Cent, but a standard for how an artist of his magnitude should be reimagining his songs live.

Aside from Yayo, 50 Cent without G-Unit is like Bono without U2. 50 Cent’s days as the G-Unit General are over, but it would’ve made the 20-year celebration more special if The Game actually had come out to perform his parts for “Hate It or Love It” and “How We Do.” Or if we'd gotten to see Lloyd Banks, Young Buck and Tony Yayo perform G-Unit songs or individual solo songs.

Yayo and Uncle Murda served as 50’s companions to orchestrate dance crew battles with his G-Unit dancers, assist him with emphasizing lyrics in his songs and for crowd control by keeping our hands in the air. A part of the G-Unit faithful would’ve loved to see 50 Cent and Tony Yayo do “So Seductive.”

If you grew up on 50 Cent’s music, a lot of the songs he performed probably brought on nostalgia for your teenage and adolescent years. The stage production included showing the changes to New York City through backdrops and the performers’ outfits, bringing a storytelling element to 50’s songs that hasn’t been done in a while. It also evoked memories of watching some of these videos for the first time on TRL or 106 & Park. Some of those wow moments were his performances of Lil’ Kim’s “Magic Stick,” “P.I.M.P.,” “Candy Shop” and “Ayo Technology.”

Despite it being billed as the 20th anniversary of GRODT, the rapper mostly stuck to popular songs such as “If I Can’t” and “21 Questions.” It could be his torn relationship with former G-Unit members means he can’t perform “Blood Hound” without Young Buck or “Don’t Push Me” without Lloyd Banks. Maybe the deeper cuts on GRODT like “Gotta Make It to Heaven” and “Poor Lil Rich” don’t hit the same as “What Up Gangsta.” By working in songs from The Massacre, Curtis, and Before I Self Destruct as well as modern era songs “Big Rich Town” and Pop Smoke’s “The Woo,” it felt more like 50 Cent trying to secure a Las Vegas residency than a full playback of the aggressive content from one of the biggest-selling rap albums ever.

However, 50 Cent does recognize that this might be one of his last major tours for a while.

“I want to personally thank everyone for coming out tonight in advance because it has been amazing,” he said. “I have so many things going on in film and television that it is putting me in a different direction. I got goals that I want to achieve there too. So I won’t be able to commit to a full tour like this.

“103 dates. This is show No. 25,” he continued. “Live Nation set me up. Put me in Dallas. 102 fucking degrees.”

The heat might have made him uncomfortable, but rap’s bad guy never slowed down as he continued to put on a respectable performance that showed he's still got it. After Jeremih returned in his own bulletproof vest to do his 50 Cent collab “Down on Me” and a very NSFW rendition of “Birthday Sex” with one of the dancers, it was time for Fif to take us home.

The final three songs — “Many Men,” “I’m the Man” and “In da Club” — had streamers and confetti shooting and falling from the sky, a proper farewell for Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson as he heads to his next city. It was unpleasant and sticky from the hot weather, but Fif should know by now that a Texas heat wave is par for the course when you live here. From the number of Dallas fans who showed up, it was clear that misery loves company.