Rapper 50 Cent (real name: Curtis Jackson) was arrested Tuesday (Dec. 31) morning after police found two guns inside a car parked outside a New York nightclub where he was due to perform, authorities said. The 27-year-old was arrested just before 2 a.m. after the sport utility vehicle he was riding in was found parked in a no-standing zone outside the Copacabana nightclub in Manhattan.
Officers then conducted a search of the car because it had tinted windows. They found a .25-caliber handgun and a .45-caliber pistol, said Sgt. Mike Wysokowski, a police department spokesman. Police said both weapons were loaded.
50 Cent and the four men with him were each charged with two counts of criminal possession of a weapon. The rapper’s lawyer could not be reached for comment.
50 Cent was discovered by Run-D.M.C.’s Jam Master Jay (real name: Jason Mizell). After the Oct. 30 execution slaying of Mizell, investigators learned of a threat to 50 Cent; at their suggestion, the rapper canceled a performance. Police later downplayed any suggestion that Jam Master Jay’s killers were after 50 Cent. The Jam Master Jay shooting is still unsolved.
John Mangan, the promoter for 50 Cent’s scheduled performance at the nightclub, said the police search was unjustified. “I think they’re trying to get him … to connect him to things that he has nothing to do with,” Mangan said.
50 Cent’s vehicle “was parked outside the club for no longer than two minutes, and as he was getting out of the car to go inside the police came up and stopped him and told him to get back in the car and go around the corner, where they searched the car,” said Mangan.
Eminem has been helping 50 Cent in his career, and his track “Wanksta” is on the Shady/Interscope soundtrack to Eminem’s film “8 Mile.” 
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