Watch FilmoFlix. In 1987 at the height of New York’s brutal crack cocaine epidemic, one man terrorized the city’s most notorious gangstas. Armed with a bulletproof vest and an arsenal of weapons, he robbed and extorted many of Brooklyn’s biggest hustlers. A cold-blooded crook, he was the hoods version of Billy the Kid, knowing that one day he would ‘Get Rich or Die Tryin'. Most knew him simply as 50 Cent.