A single with an unusually clear launch
“50 Cent feat. Eminem & Adam Levine My Life” refers to the official 2012 single “My Life,” led by 50 Cent and featuring Eminem and Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine. Unlike the stray files and prematurely labeled “new songs” that frequently surrounded rap albums of the period, its premiere, release and video were coordinated by its rights holders.
On November 26, 2012, Interscope announced the song through a label-supplied release distributed by PR Newswire. The announcement identified Symbolyc One, usually styled S1, as producer; promised digital retail availability the following day; and scheduled a live debut by 50 Cent and Levine on NBC’s The Voice that night. Contemporary recaps, including CBS New York’s account of the broadcast, confirm that performance.
The official video followed on November 27. Directed by Rich Lee and filmed in Detroit, it places the three musicians in a nocturnal pursuit by helicopter, with boxer Andre Dirrell appearing in a cameo. The video on 50 Cent’s Official Artist Channel bears the Interscope copyright notice and remains the authoritative watch source.
The apparent one-day discrepancy in release dates is easily resolved. November 26 was the announcement, radio and television-premiere date; November 27 was the stated wide digital-retail and video date. Some digital catalogs display only the year or a generic January 1 date, but the label’s contemporary schedule is more precise. November 26 is the defining public event because that is when the campaign visibly began.
Who made “My Life”
The official performer billing is 50 Cent featuring Eminem and Adam Levine. S1 produced the track. Published repertoire and release databases commonly credit Curtis Jackson, Marshall Mathers, Adam Levine, Larry Griffin Jr.—S1’s legal name—and Herb Rooney as writers. The official digital release is documented by MusicBrainz as a November 26 U.S. single, issued through Aftermath, Interscope and Shady Records.
Those roles are not interchangeable. Levine provides the recurring sung hook, giving the record its instantly legible pop frame. 50 Cent opens the narrative as a star trying to recover forward motion after career turbulence. Eminem’s extended verse raises the intensity, approaching the theme as a frantic argument with fame, expectation and his own history. S1’s production connects them with heavy drums, distorted guitar texture and a rising arrangement that belongs as much to early-2010s arena rap as to New York street rap.
The track is sometimes described as rap rock, but that label can obscure its commercial design. This is a rap record engineered for simultaneous lives: headphones, rhythmic radio, a televised talent show and a cinematic video. Levine’s chorus does not merely soften the verses. Its insistence on escape gives the verses a common emotional destination.
Recovery music without a clean victory
“My Life” arrived at a complicated point in 50 Cent’s discography. Nearly a decade after Get Rich or Die Tryin’, he remained globally recognizable, but his relationship with Interscope and the route to his next studio album had become increasingly unstable. The planned record, Street King Immortal, had already passed through shifting titles, schedules and configurations.
That background gives the song’s comeback language extra weight. 50 Cent presents public success as a trap: audiences demand the sensation of his early rise, while the machinery around fame turns personal turmoil into spectacle. Eminem intensifies that conflict, portraying achievement not as security but as a cycle of pressure and combat. Levine’s hook converts these specific rap-career anxieties into a universal desire to flee.
This reading is interpretation, but it is anchored in the campaign’s chronology. The song was promoted not as a detached single but as the next major step toward Street King Immortal. NME’s contemporary report described the album as forthcoming in early 2013. The label announcement likewise promised it as 50 Cent’s next studio album. In that moment, “My Life” was intended to announce an era, not memorialize an album that would never exist.
A bigger British hit than an American one
In the United States, “My Life” opened at No. 27 on the Billboard Hot 100, a substantial debut but not the long-running smash its cast suggested. Its British performance was more dramatic. The Official Charts Company archive records a No. 2 peak on the UK Singles Chart beginning January 26, 2013. It spent three weeks in the Top 10, five in the Top 40 and nine in the Top 100. The archive also identifies Interscope and the catalog code USUM71214597.
That delayed UK chart arrival explains why discussions from January 2013 can make the song appear newer than it was. Britain received a formal January campaign after the November American premiere. It also demonstrates the value of separating release, impact and peak dates: a song can be launched in one year and achieve its defining chart result in the next.
The lineup itself helped. Eminem and 50 Cent carried a long, well-publicized alliance dating to 50’s breakthrough, while Levine was then highly visible both with Maroon 5 and as a coach on The Voice. The television premiere effectively joined three audiences in a single promotional event. The song’s British No. 2 peak suggests that this crossover architecture worked even though it stopped short of a U.S. Top 20 placement.
The video turns publicity into pursuit
Rich Lee’s video does more than illustrate the escape theme. A searchlight repeatedly locates the performers in abandoned or industrial Detroit spaces, converting fame into surveillance. Vehicles imply mobility, but the helicopter negates it: no matter how quickly the stars move, publicity hovers above them.
Eminem’s Detroit presence is particularly important. The city is not a neutral action-movie location; it connects the collaboration to his home ground and to the Shady/Aftermath lineage that helped make 50 Cent a superstar. Dirrell’s cameo adds another version of public combat, placing an actual fighter inside a song about reputational struggle.
The production and video are emphatic enough to suggest triumph, yet the narrative remains unresolved. Nobody defeats the pursuer. That unresolved chase now seems prophetic—not because the artists could have known the album’s fate, but because “My Life” kept moving while its intended destination receded.
The album that never arrived
Street King Immortal endured repeated postponements after the single’s release. 50 Cent issued other projects and moved deeper into television production, but the promised album never materialized. In July 2021, he finally said the original version would not be released, a decision covered by Revolt and Complex.
That does not make “My Life” unreleased. The single remains an official, commercially distributed work with a rights-holder video and an independently documented chart history. What became obsolete was its original album designation.
The distinction is central to its legacy. “My Life” was not a leak from a canceled project; it was a successful release stranded by one. Its polished, multinational campaign briefly made Street King Immortal appear inevitable. A decade later, the song survives as both a complete record and the most spectacular signpost to an album that never reached the road.