I Don’t know what you heard about me…How Scary Bear became Scary Bear.

I’m convinced that if Scary Bear had a voice, it would belong to none other than Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson.

Why, you might ask?

Why the fuck not?

Look at him. Doesn’t he just look like he’d have that lazy, slightly slurred Queens drawl that 50 acquired after taking a bullet through the cheek? That unmistakable combination of menace, amusement and complete disregard for anyone else’s feelings?

And the laugh.

50 Cent has one of the greatest laughs in recorded human history. It’s this magnificent, high-pitched, borderline asthmatic cackle that sounds like a supervillain just found out his arch nemesis filed for bankruptcy. (See Ja Rule,Mayweather, Diddy ETC)

It's the laugh of a man who knows something you don't, has already made forty million dollars off it, and is about to humiliate you publicly for his own entertainment.

I can see Scary Bear making some wildly inappropriate joke at a rival icon’s expense, posting it on Instagram, and sitting back in his diamond-encrusted jewelry, cackling like Fitty while the comments section burns to the ground.

I have absolutely no idea why this association entered my head one day.

But now I can't get rid of it.

I've developed an entire imaginary cartoon universe where 50 Cent voices Scary Bear. Or perhaps some sort of Who Framed Roger Rabbit situation where I'm Bob Hoskins, Scary Bear is my animated gangster sidekick, and we're thugging it out around Detroit with his pals Banks and Yayo.

Naturally, there's a soundtrack.

Somewhere along the way, Eminem makes an appearance. Maybe Dr. Dre produces the theme song.

Actually, who the fuck am I kidding? I'd probably produce it myself. This is my story, my book and my imaginary cinematic universe. My ego certainly isn't going to let someone else have all the fun.

What the actual fuck goes on in my head sometimes?

In Any case, Scary Bear was conceived in December of 2022.

I was roughly nine months sober and my artistic palette was beginning to take greater risks. Robin's egg blue, or Tiffany blue if we're feeling financially irresponsible, had begun finding its way into my work.

At this point I was painting a lot of pink clouds.

For those unfamiliar with the term, the pink cloud is something we talk about in recovery. It's that early period of sobriety where everything feels almost suspiciously wonderful. You're alive. You're clearheaded. You haven't destroyed anything today. Birds are singing, colors seem brighter, and you're convinced you've finally cracked the code to the universe.

It's a beautiful place to be.

It's also temporary.

Eventually the cloud dissipates and you realize sobriety doesn't exempt you from being a miserable asshole on a Tuesday. You still have bills, responsibilities, trauma, character defects and a lifetime of bad decisions to reconcile.

But in December of 2022, I was still floating around up there.

And apparently painting the weather.

One particular canvas began as a bevy of turquoise shapes floating among a neon and pale pink draped background. No plan. No great artistic statement. Just colors, textures and the therapeutic process of putting paint somewhere other than on my clothing.

As the shapes developed, something familiar began emerging.

A few months earlier, I'd doodled this strange little cat-bear creature in a notebook. I had no idea what he was supposed to be. Eventually I built some other versions, one of which had a clownlike face, a single gold spiked tooth protruding from his mouth and the name Scary Bear.

But now, looking at these blue shapes on the canvas, I could see him again. And suddenly I had an idea that was probably three paintings ahead of the one I was actually working on.

Growing up, I was obsessed with the arcade game Rampage.

For those unfamiliar, Rampage was a magnificent exercise in mindless destruction. You controlled one of three giant monsters, including a King Kong-like gorilla, a Wolf and a Godzilla-like lizard, and your entire objective was to destroy cities, smash buildings, throw military vehicles, eat people and generally be an enormous pain in the ass.

There was no elaborate plot. No noble quest. No princess to rescue.

Just property damage.

See my chapter on the destruction of personal property and my subsequent arrest for a slightly less entertaining interpretation of this concept.

The monsters were actually transformed humans, and when you lost your health, you'd shrink back into your naked human form and shuffle off the screen in disgrace.

An absolutely brilliant metaphor for my twenties and thirties, now that I think about it.

I loved this game. I could play it endlessly, destroying entire metropolitan areas without ever having to explain myself to an insurance adjuster.

So when my signature WolfGangGang-style Detroit buildings began emerging along the bottom of the canvas, I realized what was happening.

There was a kaiju looming over the city.

A giant turquoise cat-bear thing with a single gold spiked tooth, questionable intentions and enough gold jewelry to make Mr. T look like he'd fallen on hard times.

Scary Bear had arrived.

And he wasn't going to destroy metropolitan Detroit alone.

The idea quickly evolved into two additional paintings featuring equally ridiculous creatures terrorizing the surrounding suburbs. A giant wolf and an enormous lizard joined the festivities, each laying waste to their respective portions of the Detroit metropolitan area.

None of them were particularly deserving of names.

YET

I referred to the series as my Creature Features, a collection of oversized monsters wreaking havoc on the places I grew up.

But the more I looked at them, the more obvious it became that Scary Bear was different. The others were monsters.

Scary Bear was a personality.

He had something the others didn't. A face, an attitude, an expression that suggested he knew exactly what he was doing and wasn't particularly concerned about the consequences.

I never sold that original painting by design.

It's still hanging on my studio wall.

And I don't anticipate it going anywhere.

His face wasn't entirely unfamiliar, either.

Throughout college, I had an enormous orange tabby cat who should have been named Garfield but was instead named Sonny Corleone.

Why?

Because my rapper pseudonym at the time was Jimmy Con, a play on Jimmy Caan, and I was such an insufferable fucking egomaniac that even my household pets needed supporting roles in my imaginary cinematic universe.

Side fact: The name Jimmy Con was there for a reason. Some Columbia College coeds and a handful of my old friends can certainly attest to that.

But we don't need to get into it.

Anyway, Sonny was a big, fat, obnoxious orange cat with a personality far larger than his already considerable body.

Some of Sonny's face eventually found its way into that original notebook doodle.

Sonny Cat became Scary Cat.

Scary Cat became Scary Bear.

And Scary Bear became something I never anticipated.

Initially, I gave him the personality of my then two-year-old son. Curious, mischievous, fearless and constantly getting into things while trying to understand the world around him.

An innocent creature in a world that isn't always innocent.

But as I continued painting him, something interesting happened.

Scary Bear began taking on characteristics of someone else.

Me.

Not just the person I was becoming, either.

The person I used to be.

Curious but careful.

Confident but deeply insecure.

Loving but capable of being an absolute fucking nightmare.

Generous but selfish.

Disciplined but perpetually attracted to chaos.

Hilarious but occasionally using humor to hide something considerably darker.

A walking contradiction with excellent taste in jewelry.

Scary Bear is the collection of personalities I've accumulated over forty-two years of existing on this planet.

He's the kid who wanted to be an artist before he even knew what an artist was.

He's the teenager who wanted everybody to like him but acted like he couldn't give less of a fuck.

He's the twenty-something who thought success meant money, status, women, expensive things and being the loudest personality in any room.

He's the addict who wanted everything immediately and couldn't understand why there were consequences or why he had to wait and want.

And he's the sober father who now spends a considerable portion of his existence trying to understand what the hell that other guy was thinking.

Sometimes he's one of those people.

Sometimes he's all of them before 9am

That's what makes him interesting to me.

He's not some sanitized cartoon representation of personal growth. I didn't create a cuddly little mascot to demonstrate that I've conquered my demons and now float around the universe distributing wisdom and positive affirmations.

Fuck that

Scary Bear gets jealous. He gets angry. He wants attention. He wants to be loved. He wants to be feared. He wants to be left alone. He wants to be the center of the fucking universe.

Sound familiar?

The difference is that Scary Bear gets to act on some of those impulses without destroying his life.

I can put my ego, anger, insecurities and most ridiculous fantasies onto a canvas and let this little blue bastard carry them around for me.

It's almost like outsourcing my character defects to an imaginary employee.

And he's doing a wonderful job as my subordinate!

Of course, from a purely commercial standpoint, it doesn't hurt that he's adorable.

He's already been made into a tremendous stuffie. Available for purchase on my website, wink wink.

He's found his way onto skateboards, jackets, sneakers, Croc Jibbitz, stickers and all sorts of other merchandise. The possibilities have been endless. What started as a strange doodle in a notebook has somehow become a recognizable character with his own little universe, and the more I create, the more places I find to put him.

And unlike me, he doesn't need anti anxiety medication, a therapist, mediation with an ex wife or a weekly inventory of his spiritual condition.

Exhausting...

Which brings me back to 50 Cent.

I think part of my fascination with Curtis Jackson is that he embodies a particularly interesting contradiction.

The guy was shot nine times, survived, rebuilt his career after being dropped by his label, and eventually became one of the most successful rappers and entertainment businessmen of his generation.

His debut album was called Get Rich or Die Tryin’.

That's not exactly the title of a man interested in subtlety.

And frankly, I can relate.

I work my fucking dick off trying to get rich. Financially, spiritually, culturally, artistically and emotionally. Rich in experiences, relationships, knowledge, creativity and yes, occasionally actual American currency.

I've spent enough of my life completely bankrupt in several of those categories to understand their value.

And I'll probably die tryin'.

But underneath 50's bulletproof vests, diamond chains, feuds and carefully cultivated mythology is an incredibly sharp, funny, self-aware guy who seems to understand that his own absurdity is part of the entertainment.

He can be terrifying one minute, as he is on Many Men, a song that practically sounds like a death threat delivered from the afterlife.

And hilarious the next.

"I love you like a fat kid love cake."

21 Questions.

That might be one of the greatest romantic declarations in the history of hip-hop. Shakespeare can go fuck himself.

He knows how to turn conflict into theater.

And perhaps most importantly, he's managed to take a life that could have ended very differently and build an entirely new identity without pretending the old one never existed.

Now, I'm not comparing my life to getting shot nine times in Queens.

I've had enough problems and brushes with death without volunteering for additional bullet wounds.

But I understand the appeal of reinvention.

I understand what it means to survive something largely of your own making and then spend the rest of your life figuring out what to do with the person who survived.

There's a little bit of What up Gangsta in Scary Bear.

For sure a little P.I.M.P.

He's got the swagger of a gangster, the curiosity of a toddler, the emotional stability of a divorced middle-aged artist and the smile of a creature who's definitely hiding something.

He's a survivor, a troublemaker, a clown, a hustler, a sweetheart and an asshole.

He's everything I want to be and everything I no longer wish to be.

All of those things can exist in the same ridiculous turquoise monster.

That's probably why I keep painting him.

Every new Scary Bear is another version of me. Another mood, another chapter, another argument between the person I was and the person I'm trying to become.

I don't have to resolve all those contradictions.

I just have to give them somewhere to live.

And maybe, someday, Curtis Jackson will find himself sitting in a recording booth reading dialogue I wrote for an oversized blue cat-bear who insults his enemies, Goes on immature adventures and occasionally learns something about being a better person.

I can practically hear him laughing already.

And if 50 Cent ever reads this, I have one thing to say.

Fitty, I got the bear. You got the voice. Help get me rich because I’m dying tryin’