50 Cent’s tough guy persona has defined his career since Get Rich or Die Tryin’ arrived in 2003 with a bullet hole on the cover art. But in a recent video interview with Page Six, the rapper-turned-television executive admitted there’s at one person he feared — his mother Sabrina Jackson.
While discussing the upcoming season of Power Book III: Raising Kanan, he explained there’s a scene in the first episode that was taken directly from his childhood.
“[There’s a scene] from the first episode where Kanan gets roughed up and he goes back in the house and [his mother put the toys in the socks],” he said. “That really happened. Like, that was from my life.
“There’s a point where, things that you are afraid of, that I got bumped around a lot in the park, but I was more afraid of my mom than the people I got bumped around by because I could not escape her. Her being a single mom at that point, she was everything.”
Sabrina Jackson — who gave birth to 50 Cent when she was only 15 — was reportedly murdered when her son was just 8 years old. He wound up being raised by his grandparents in Queens. According to Fiddy, she perished in a house fire after someone put something in her drink and turned the gas on.
“She was my mom and my dad and she was tough, so I didn’t know when it was OK to be emotional and when it wasn’t,” 50 Cent added. “She would look and say, ‘Get up from off the floor. What you don’t over there cryin’ and actin’ like a little girl.’ She’d get mad and you go, ‘Oh, shit, it’s not OK to be hurt this time.’
“So, she’s balancing when she should be soft and when she should be firm with you.”
Power Book III: Raising Kanan airs on the STARZ Network every Sunday.
Watch the interview clip above.