Key Takeaways
- 50 Cent told Variety he felt no shame after his grandmother explained that his late mother, Sabrina Jackson, was gay.
- He turned his childhood confusion into a vulnerable verse on “Hate It or Love It,” rapping about seeing his mother kiss a girl.
- He said he and Jay-Z have never discussed their shared experience of having lesbian mothers, while noting that they reacted differently.
50 Cent is speaking openly about the day he understood that his late mother was gay, and he says the realization never carried any stigma for him.
"When your mom has friends around, you look at them and just see friends," he told Variety in a new interview. "As a child, I just saw two women hanging out. My grandmother informed me later that there was more going on and they weren't just friends, and I was like, 'Oh! Now I know what that was!'
“I'm not ashamed of that in any way,” he added. “I grew up around that."
Fif also brought up his verse on “Hate It or Love It” with The Game, with the lyrics, “Coming up I was confused, my mommy kissing a girl/Confusion occurs coming up in the cold world.”
He also told Variety that being vulnerable about the situation “made it more powerful."
Asked whether he had ever talked it through with Jay-Z, who also learned later in life that his mother Gloria is a lesbian, 50 Cent said the subject has never come up between them.
"No, but it is something we have in common," he said. "But then, find the line. We just reacted differently to it. One of us doesn't mind, and the other one kind of minds a little bit."
Fif’s mother, Sabrina Jackson, had him when she was 15 and died when he was 8, after which he was raised by his grandmother. He has said he did not know his father, and that when he was told his mother was gone and not coming back, he could not even process it.
He first addressed her sexuality publicly in a 2012 interview, recalling his grandmother telling him that "that kiss was a little different from all the other kisses you saw." He also cited Barack Obama's endorsement of same-sex marriage as an influence for his own support of marriage equality.
