Benzino revisits one of hip hop’s most infamous stories, recalling the night 50 Cent was stabbed outside New York’s Hit Factory studio. Along the way, he revives a few difficult-to-verify claims and, unsurprisingly, finds his way back to Eminem.
It’s been a while since Benzino put himself at the centre of media attention. In the absence of fresh controversies or family scandals, Benzino’s story had begun to feel repetitive. However, Tony “The Closer” Robinson, who introduced himself on his YouTube channel as a former NFL player turned real estate entrepreneur, digital marketer, and mentor, decided to revisit unreleased clips from an earlier interview with Benzino.
A knife attack
One of the interview fragments touches upon a dangerous incident that involved 50 Cent and a knife fight in the legendary Manhattan studio Hit Factory. It operated out of a massive 7-story building at 421 West 54th Street (in the Hell’s Kitchen neighbourhood) until it closed and was converted into condominiums in 2005. In this location, the infamous stabbing incident happened.
That was the early stage of Fifty’s beef with Ja Rule. Their two crews from Queens were competing for attention, influence, and industry backing, and things were tense professionally. And then one of the guys close to Fifty’s circles robbed Ja Rule at gunpoint. The drug mogul who ran Queens and backed Ja Rule up, McGriff, leaned on the culprit. One of the early, detailed accounts of Ja Rule’s beef in the New York magazine quotes an affidavit filed in January 2003 in a then-ongoing federal investigation into Murder Inc. According to it, after the robbery occurred, Ja Rule “informed Irv Gotti, who in turn contacted McGriff. McGriff promptly secured the return of the jewellery… using his reputation for violence to intimidate and threaten the robber”.
He returned the jewellery, but it did little to repair the relationship between two rappers, not very friendly to begin with.
So, when their paths crossed in March 2000, the fight broke out. The same article claims that Irv “Gotti” Lorenzo, his brother Christopher, and a Murder Inc. rapper named Ramel “Black Child” Gill attacked 50 Cent outside of Hit Factory where both Ja Rule and Fifty had recording sessions that day on different levels. The Lorenzos punched 50 Cent, and Gill stabbed him in the chest. Fifty later received stitches and treatment for a partially collapsed lung. Two months later, 50 Cent will survive a shooting that would result in his label, Columbia Records, dropping and blacklisting him and G-Unit.
If the story feels complicated, with too many names and connections, now Benzino adds another one – his own.
A new character
Back to the video, asked whether he was cool with 50 Cent, Benzino responded with a firm no. And then he quickly moved on to a story he was eager to tell.
“You heard the story where he got stabbed, and I helped him out, right?” Benzino went on a tangent. “So, on 54th Street, there was the Hit Factory and Sony Studios. Those are the two major studios that all labels went to because they had multiple huge rooms with SSL boards in them. Sony had this room called the Hip Hop room that was downstairs that used to have like a booth thing that you get in, and you play video games with this big screen and shit”.
“So, Fifty told the story. He and his guy, I don’t know who it was, I think it was Yayo, went in the Hit Factory, and a big scuffle broke out” So far, Benzino’s story is all hearsay, but he soon places himself in the story. “I wasn’t there, but he ended up running down to my studio”. Then Benzino shares a surprisingly positive assessment of Fifty’s work. “I hadn’t met him. I heard the mixtapes. I heard the shit that they did. He had some hot shit, genuinely”.
“I remember when he came down, I’m sitting just like this, and I’m playing John Madden. I was nice at Madden back then. Super nice”. Finally, we know why he mentioned the gaming booth. “I was in for a Made Men session. You couldn’t smoke cigarettes down there. So Gsus would go outside and smoke cigarettes, and he brought Fifty in”. Apparently, Benzino was there recording with his own group, Made Men. Their debut album bombed in August 1999, so they probably tried to come up with a good follow-up, but it never happened.
“When he brought him in, I’m giving Gsus the look like, ‘What the fuck are you doing? You ain’t telling nobody. You just can’t be bringing niggas’. And not necessarily because of Fifty, but that’s just how we roll. Because it’s a protocol. We strapped him up regardless”.
Another version
Actually, this is not the only time Benzino tells the story about helping Fifty. There is no trace of it before 2025, but last year he presented this saga in an even more heroic way. Here, Benzino admits his reluctance to let an injured man inside and effectively says that 50 Cent only made it to the studio because Benzino’s bandmate, Gsus, met Fif outside. Moreover, Benzino does not hide that he condemned this gesture as a breach of some protocol, but states that people in the studio had bandaged Fifty.
In an interview with We in Miami, Benzino is much louder and prouder when sharing this story. In this version, Gsus disappears altogether. Now Fif walks into the studio as if on his own, bleeding, looking for refuge from Murder Inc. thugs who are looking for him. In this edition, Benzino and Fifty have a civil conversation. Moreover, Fifty shows Benzino an unloaded gun he picked up from the ground during the fight. Benzino says he called a car service that took Fifty to the hospital, and finally claims triumphantly, “I saved 50 Cent’s life!” And then adds, as if he never mentioned a protocol that does not allow bringing people in need to his safe place, “I would do that for anyone!”
A story with no end
It is difficult to comprehend that Benzino has never told this story before, even in the years when The Source would go after 50 Cent, primarily, as we understand, because of his affiliation with Eminem. But objectivity is not Benzino’s strong suit. He reinforced that reputation when asked about his hip hop preference
His Top 3, Benzino says, are LL Cool J, NWA, and Future. Asked about which rapper is the most overrated, he tried not to give a direct answer. Still, he could only resist for a brief second before launching into his favourite topic.
“You already know. I’mma say number one. Man, who overrated? Y’all, I’m even gonna say it. Everybody out there, you know what I’m saying? All his fans and everybody. I’mma say Eminem’s overrated to me”, Benzino surprised nobody with his response. His argument was one hip hop heads had heard many times before. “I think if Eminem was black, people wouldn’t be giving him those props. Cannibus was nice as fuck. How come Cannibus isn’t selling billions? There are so many rappers that rap in that Eminem genre that never got the props of an Eminem, because he’s white, because of the colour of his skin. So, I’mma have to say him. I’m still going to get hate mail, hate tweets, and hate, but it’s just my opinion, people. You know what I’m saying? As far as anybody else, I can’t think of them”.
So, here you have it. Not just Eminem is the most overrated rapper; no one else is. Benzino would know. He is famous for his objectivity, especially after the infamous, fabricated positive review of the Made Men album in The Source, which has damaged the magazine’s credibility. The surreal irony of this beef and the trajectory of Benzino’s long downfall is what keeps the audience engaged all these years, even without any contribution from Eminem’s side. With interviews like this, no disses needed.