After finding great success with his hit Starz crime drama series Power and BMF, Curtis ’50 Cent’ Jackson is exploring real-life homicides within the hip hop industry in a new docuseries for WeTV and AllBLK called Hip Hop Homicides. Jackson serves as executive producer of the series along with Mona Scott Young and Vanessa Satten. Van Lathan hosts each episode during the eight-episode first season. “Hip Hop Homicides” explores the murders of popular hip-hop artists.
On Thursday (November 10th), The Knockturnal attended a screening for the upcoming third episode of the docuseries which focuses on the murder of Magnolia Shorty. Prior to episode three the first two episodes explored the murders of Pop Smoke and King Von. Jackson, Young, and Satten were in attendance at the screening which took place at New York City’s Crosby Hotel.
During a panel discussion following the screening, Jackson, Young and Satten spoke about developing the series. Young stated about the mission of the series was, “To find a way to not only maybe uncover new leads or provide some measure of answers, if not closure for family, friends, and fans, but also find a way to keep those memories and to get to know them as 50 cent in different ways.” “I love hearing everyone laughing along because I felt like you guys kind of got to know her [Magnolia Shorty] in a different way. Right? And so a big part of our commitment was one keeping their legacies alive, preserving it and also allowing their fans and their loved ones to express themselves. We also heard at some points from moms that their voices were silenced. And everyone knew the headline, they knew the marquee name, but they didn’t know the person. They didn’t know who they were. And so all of those things went into our thinking and our crafting as we put the show together. But it was very important for him to be told by us, right and because I think we care in a much different way. And we wanted to do something that would again be a legacy project.” Young added
“We don’t really want to have a bunch more seasons because it means more deaths, but at the same time, you want to be able to shine a light on it and talk about the artists that were lost and their legacies. The biggest thing was the families were excited that we were able to tell the stories that they thought hadn’t been told or that people hadn’t been celebrating accurately. Unfortunately, working in hip hop media we are watching these cases over and over happen synchronously. We just saw PNB Rock and TakeOff [gunned down]. We actually had this show premiere the week that Takeoff passed, which was a very hard thing to figure out how to celebrate when you’re dealing with that tragedy at the same time. So it really is an odd situation because you don’t want to keep covering these stories. Some will be focused on some of the older ones I don’t know. But at the same time without these stories, you don’t have a show like this existing,” Satten commented.
Jackson pointed out that there are over 600 homicides connected to hip hop. “And each one of those stories is interesting as going into this, it’s someone’s entire life at that point and them putting their energy and everything into music and some of them have one foot in the street one foot is in the music [industry]. But it happen and it’s interesting to see the aftermath of it and how people handled it”, Jackson explained.
“Hip Hop Homicides” airs on WeTV on Thursdays and streams on ALLBLK on Mondays. The episode focused on Magnolia Shorty will air on November 18th.
Photo Credit: WeTV/ AMC Networks