50 Cent was "afraid of everything" after being shot nine times.
50 Cent
The 'Candy Shop' hitmaker was blasted at close range in 2000 admits it had a profound effect on him and made him more "hard".
He said: "When you get hurt as bad as I did, you become afraid of everything because you know anything can happen at any time. I got shot in the afternoon, broad daylight.
"So I got scared, and that made me harder than I was before. The only time I was comfortable was when I didn't care. So I just said - f**k it.
"When you have the pistol and you're looking for them, your attention is shifted.
"You're not afraid anymore. You're like, 'I hope that is them coming up the block now.' "
50 - whose real name is Curtis Jackson - began dealing drugs when he was just 12 years old, but his beloved grandmother never believed people who told her of his antics.
He admitted to The Big Issue magazine: "At 16 I had already been involved in street life for years. I was aggressive enough to get by on the street - but then I'd go home and be my grandmother's baby.
"I was outside hustling but I still had to talk my grandmother into letting me walk home from school myself. I said to her, 'Look, I'm bigger than you now'...
"I felt I had to do whatever it took to get by. The stuff that came out of my mouth when I was outside the house - wow, that kid was crazy.
"I was the youngest in the pack, everyone else was at least 16.
"People told my grandmother stuff I'd done and she'd say, 'Nope, not my baby.' We all wanted nice things, nice clothes, because we wanted to attract girls. So we had to hustle to afford them."
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