50 Cent Hanging Upside Down

About

50 Cent Hanging Upside Down refers to rapper 50 Cent hanging upside down while performing his song "In Da Club" during the halftime show at the Super Bowl LVI in mid-February 2022, which is a reference to the 2003 music video for the song. 50 Cent's position during the performance, combined with the fact that the rapper had to wait until fellow performers Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg finished their performances, spawned memes online shortly after.

Origin

On February 13th, 2022, during the halftime performance of Super Bowl LVI, rapper 50 Cent performed his 2003 hit single "In Da Club" as a surprise artist.^[1] The performance (shown below, left) followed the opening songs by rappers Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg and opened with 50 Cent hanging upside down, which is a reference to the 2003 music video for the song in which 50 Cent is doing upside-down crunches (video shown below, right).

Following the performance, the NFL posted a silent clip of the performance to Twitter,^[2] where it gained over 1.4 million views, 4,100 retweets and 23,200 likes in one day (shown below).

Wow. @50cent #PepsiHalftime pic.twitter.com/8UlJW57gEX

— NFL (@NFL) February 14, 2022

Spread

Starting on the same day, February 13th, 2022, users on Twitter posted memes referencing 50 Cent hanging upside down during the start of his performance. Many viral tweets referenced the assumption that 50 Cent remained in the upside-down position during the performance by Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, which lasted over three minutes. For example, a post by Twitter^[3] user @justinmcphai1 gained over 3,800 retweets and 23,900 likes in one day (shown below, left). A post by Twitter^[4] user @Bekkerrrz gained over 810 retweets and 5,500 likes in the same period (shown below, right). Some memes also commented on 50 Cent's appearance, implying that the rapper has gained weight.^[5]

Later on February 13th, 50 Cent acknowledged the memes in two tweets^[6][7] that received over 2,100 retweets and 15,700 likes and 2,700 retweets and 18,400 likes in one day, respectively (shown below, left and right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References