50 Cent to bring greatest hits tour to Dubai's Coca-Cola Arena

Rapper 50 Cent is coming to Dubai in September. After selling out shows across Europe throughout the summer, including in London and Paris, the US musician and television mogul, real name Curtis Jackson III, will perform at the Coca-Cola Arena on September 30. It will mark the second time that a Super Bowl act has played at the venue, the first being Maroon 5, as Coca-Cola Arena’s opening concert in 2019. As part of his Green Light Gang World Tour, 50 Cent is expected to perform a greatest-hits set in Dubai, including In Da Club , Candy Shop and 21 Questions . . Supporting him onstage throughout the show will be long-time collaborator and G-Unit member Tony Yayo and rapper Uncle Murda. Visa cardholders can register for pre-sales on the Coca-Cola arena's website , with tickets available to them from 10am on July 12. General ticket sales will start at 10am on July 13. Prices will range from Dh225 to Dh545. Promoter Thomas Ovesen from TOP Entertainment says fans should expect “an unending sequence of hits”. “50 Cent is one of the rare hip-hop artists, alongside Eminem and Nas, who has managed to maintain and transcend his initial popularity,” he tells The National. “His knack for making hits combined with street cred and rhyming is up there in my book. “Then, of course, you had the amazing Super Bowl half-time show this year, and the television shows and movies he stars in or produced that have extended his fame to a new generation of fans." 50 Cent's career has produced a mixed bag in terms of successful projects. His last album was 2014’s mediocre Animal Ambition , but he has also worked on producing a string of popular crime dramas, namely Power , For Life and BMF. Older fans will remember him for 2003’s seminal Get Rich Or Die Tryin’. Produced by Dr Dre , it was one of the biggest hip-hop debut albums in history, with nearly a million copies sold in one week. It also spawned the aforementioned No 1 hits In Da Club and 21 Questions . The album catapulted him to fame and led to his foray into non-musical fields, from television and film production to fashion, with his label G-Unit Clothing Company. He also launched his own grape-flavoured vitaminwater drink, Formula 50. In a series of interviews with The National over the past decade, 50 Cent has expressed his desire to be more than a big-selling rapper. "I'm just trying to think outside the box. I'm excited about all possibilities because I don't see limitations," he said in 2012 . "I'm not afraid to venture into other categories." When it comes to his knack for producing popular television crime sagas, particularly the 1980s-inspired BMF or Black Mafia Family, he attributes its success to his hip-hop background. "It’s one of the best stories to tell," he said last year . "They’re very close to music culture. A lot of times, street culture is very close to hip-hop culture. Everyone’s very, very close together. “The time period is when hip-hop shifted from the east coast sound or the west coast sound to a more southern-based song, and dance culture became more relevant at that point. It’s where we are now musically.” As for maintaining his overall popularity as a concert drawcard, despite not releasing an album for the better part of a decade, 50 Cent puts it down to his work soundtracking a generation of fans. “My core audience were in college in their heyday in 2003, when they used to party at every possible moment. And at that point, I had the largest debut album [ Get Rich Or Die Tryin' ] in hip-hop. So they couldn't party without me. There was no way you could escape me," he reflected in 2020 .

50 Cent to bring greatest hits tour to Dubai's Coca-Cola Arena

Expect hip-hop staples 'In Da Club' and '21 Questions' to be played during the the show

Enduring success

You can’t escape 50

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