50 Cent: He's gone from super rich to stony broke – but will the rapper have the last laugh?

The first man to call himself 50 Cent was Kelvin Martin, a petty criminal from Brooklyn, who was shot dead in 1987 and is said to have earned the nickname for his willingness to rob people regardless of how little money they had in their pockets. Curtis Jackson, the hip-hop star who would later take Martin’s moniker as his stage name, has said he did so because “I’m the same kind of person 50 Cent was. I provide for myself by any means.”