Diamonds, Engagement Rings & Diamond Jewelry in popular culture

Rapper 50 Cent is dodging bullets again, only this time they aren’t of the lead variety.   His babymama, Shaniqua Thompkins, is suing him for 50 million dollars.  50 MILLION dollars.  One can only imagine how she and her attorneys arrived at that number.  50 responded to the suit by saying: “If I ever intended to make that kind of commitment…I would have married her” (TMZ.com).  He never gave her an engagement ring, or even a promise of one, but she claims that their love, evidently, transcended that kind of thing.  For a while, anyway.

Would You Trust Anything This Man Does Orally?

I think I saw that in a movie once.  Who was the star of it again?  Oh yeah…50 Cent.

Because real life is seldom like the movies and 50 bailed on the relationship, Shaniqua (undoubtedly with the help of fun-loving litigators with a taste for danger) decided to sue the volatile rapper for breach of contract.  She claims that they had a verbal agreement in which she and their son, Marquise, would live in 50’s $2.4 million house in Dix Hills, Long Island, and that she would own the house.  After putting down the money for the house, he instead put the house in his own name.  The nerve!  In 2007, she claimed that the $25,000 she received in child support was not enough.  Is this kid wearing diamond-encrusted braces?  Unfortunately for 50 Cent, with his diamond jewelry and tailored suits, he gives off a scent more powerful than pheromones: money.  Not only has 50 Cent had massive success as a rapper and moderate success as an actor, but he made himself into a full-on mogul with the release of his “G-Unit” clothing line, on sale now wherever thug-wear is sold.

Thompkins’ attorney claims that the relationship between his client and 50 might be viewed as a common-law marriage.  He argues that “there wasn’t a written contract but an expressed oral agreement…whatever profits he was able to achieve would be divided equally, and he had promised her and their son that they could live in the house”.  An oral agreement with 50 Cent, a notorious rapper and lyricist that penned the classic “Candy Shop” (you’ll have to look it up yourself) isn’t worth the air it takes to keep her attorney talking. 

Is Shaniqua Thompkins really naïve enough to believe the words of a post-coital rap-superstar?  Thank God for lawyers and their endless need to chase down the fame and money that others have earned.    And Thank God for 50 Cent’s inability to just shut up and go get a sandwich afterwards like a normal man.