In da Club

The Recording Industry Association of America certified "In da Club" Diamond in 2023, two decades after the single made 50 Cent a household name. Released on January 7, 2003 as the lead single from his debut album Get Rich or Die Tryin', the track gave the Queens rapper his first number one on the Billboard Hot 100, where it stayed for nine consecutive weeks and blocked R. Kelly's "Ignition (Remix)" for five of them. In March 2003 it broke a Billboard record as the most listened-to song in radio history within a single week, and Billboard ranked it the number one song of 2003.

The recording came together quickly after Eminem discovered 50 Cent in 2002 and flew him to Los Angeles to meet Dr. Dre. It was the first of seven tracks 50 Cent cut with Dre in five days, and he wrote all the lyrics in about an hour. Dr. Dre and Mike Elizondo had built the production six months earlier from a shared drum programming session, one of five beats developed that way. It was first offered to D12 for the 8 Mile soundtrack, but the group passed because they did not know how to approach it. Rakim was also offered the track, though creative tensions with Dre meant his version never came out.

50 Cent first recorded the song with only the drum beat, in the basement studio of Sha Money XL's Long Island home, then re-recorded it two weeks later in Los Angeles, where Dre and Elizondo added synths and an eight-note guitar part. He drew the chorus from a Lloyd Banks lyric, wanting a celebration of life to balance the darker material on the album.