The Queens-born rapper had broken big with his blockbuster debut album, Get Rich Or Die Tryin', in 2003, and he hadn't stopped dominating popular culture. With his gritty image, his compelling backstory (shot nine times, in case anyone needed a reminder), a seemingly-endless appetite for drama, and some of the most pristine production courtesy of none other than Dr. Dre, it's not hard to understand why 50 Mania was so rampant in the early 00s.

So when it was announced that MTV Films and Paramount Pictures was moving forward with a semi-autobiographical drama about the G-Unit star, it made all the sense in the world. After all, Eminem had just been featured in his own semi-true-to-life flick 8 Mile, and that movie had been an across-the-board success. 50 Cent's movie featured a stellar cast that included fresh-off-of-Hustle and Flow Terence Howard, Bill Duke and a soon-to-be-household name Viola Davis.

The movie tells the story of Marcus, a street kid from New York City who is forced to navigate a hardscrabble life after the murder of his mother. He eventually turns to selling drugs and working with a dealer named Majestic. The story takes you all the way back to Marcus as a youngster in the 1980s, and that's when the soundtrack delves into some classic New York City street rap to give you a sense of the dangers of the era.

"9MM Goes Bang" is one of the standout tracks on Boogie Down Productions' uber-classic first album, Criminal Minded. Over a loopy, reggae-influenced beat, KRS affects his best island riddim, rapping about a drug dealer and an apartment shootout. It's one of the first examples of straight up crime tales in rap music, and puts Blastmaster KRS-One firmly on the front end of what would soon be dubbed "gangsta rap." And it also highlights another important aspect of the Bronx emcee's legacy: the marrying of rap and dancehall.

The singsongy flow KRS adopts on the song, (and throughout Criminal Minded on songs like "The Bridge Is Over") would become a staple on rap hits and would also open the floodgates for an ongoing love affair between Hip-Hop and reggae.

In the movie, young Marcus decides to protect himself by any means necessary and goes to purchase a gun. After securing the weapon, we see Marcus posing with it in his mirror at home, as BDP's ominous, reggae-inflected classic blares over the background.

Get Rich Or Die Tryin' wasn't the critical or commercial success that 8 Mile had been, but it wasn't exactly a misfire for 50 Cent. In hindsight, it now looks like merely the first of many forays into scripted entertainment that would become a linchpin for the soon-to-be mogul's career. After Get Rich... 50's G-Unit Films would eventually morph into Cheetah Vision by 2009, a production company founded by 50 and Randall Emmitt. The company became famous for producing straight-to-DVD films starring 50, like Before I Self Destruct and All Things Fall Apart.

And those projects set the table for 50's push into premium cable television, as he landed his deal with STARZ in 2015 and launched the successful Power franchise on the network.

Get Rich Or Die Tryin' may fall more under "guilty pleasure" than "urban classic," but it's a film that, at the very least, kickstarted an entertainment empire. Regardless, in one powerful scene, it connected the grittiness of cinematic storytelling with the unapologetic thump of 80s street rap--an affirmation of the legacy of Boogie Down Productions' seminal first album.