50 Cent's mother used to stuff toys in socks for him to use as weapons.
50 Cent
The 46-year-old rap star - who was shot nine times in 2000 - has revealed that his mother turned to some prison-yard tactics in order to help her son to defend himself at school.
The 'In da Club' hitmaker - who features the idea in his new show, 'Power Book III: Raising Kanan' - shared: "[There’s a scene] from the first episode where [titular character] Kanan gets beat up and he goes back in the house and his mother puts the toys in the socks.
"That really happened; that was from my life.”
50 - whose real name is Curtis Jackson - was born and raised in New York City. And the rapper admits he was more afraid of his own mother - who died in a fire when he was just eight - than he was of the bullies at school.
He told the New York Post newspaper's Page Six column: "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. She being a single mom at that point - she was everything."
The rapper's mother, Sabrina, worked as a drug dealer, and he still has vivid memories of her resilience.
He said: "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.
"She would look at me on the floor [when he was upset] and say, ‘Get up - what you over there crying for acting like a little girl [for].’
"She would get mad at you and you say, ‘Oh s*** - it’s not OK to be hurt this time.’ OK, so let me get up. So she determined when she should be soft and when she should be firm."
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