The Empire 50 Built

Urban Hustler’s tag line is “Documenting Success from the Street to the Boardroom,” and there are many great examples of this, Jay Z, Russell Simmons, etc. The person who I’ve been really impressed with lately though is Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson who has taken the Hip Hop business model and ran with it.

The rap-preneur is expanding his empire at a breathtaking rate. His G Unit has become a powerful business concern that includes music, clothing, shoes, watches, water, video games, television and films.

50 Cent and his producer and business partner Sha Money XL, run their operation with lots of discipline, keeping everyone focused on a single objective. "The root is loyalty and dedication," explains Sha to the NY Daily News. "You have other crews where everybody has their own agenda."

G-Unit artist albums are cross-promoted with G-Unit's clothing and sneaker lines. 50's clothes grossed approximately $100 million on top of the 4 million pairs of Reebok-distributed G-Unit sneakers he moved. Reebok’s top selling shoes was its G Unit line which 50 promotes in his interviews, songs and videos.

The G Unit clothing line accounted for quarter of Ecko Unlimited clothing sales.

"From the beginning, he has taken a very hands-on approach toward the line, sitting in on design meetings and wearing the gear on tour, on the set of his film and in his videos," said Marc Ecko.

For all his success to date and future accomplishments my hat come off to 50 Cent.