Before 50 Cent was a household name, he dropped "How to Rob" in late 1999, a track full of over-the-top lines about sticking up famous artists. One of his targets was Big Pun, and 50 joked that Pun was too heavy to chase him: "I'll rob Pun without a gun, snatch his piece then run / This na weigh four hundred pounds, how he gon' catch me, son?" Pun didn't take it as a joke. On the track "My Turn" from his second album Yeeeah Baby, he fired back with a cold threat: "And to the 50 Cent rapper, very funny, get your nut off / Cause in real life, you don't know I'll blow your m*******n' head off." The album dropped in April 2000, two months after Pun died, making it a diss from beyond the grave.

Fat Joe, Pun's partner in Terror Squad, inherited the tension, and the beef between G-Unit and Terror Squad became one of the most volatile in hip-hop. Tony Yayo later said on VladTV that the Fat Joe situation was one of G-Unit's two most serious beefs, calling it "for real" because of how thorough Joe was.

Big Pun died on February 7, 2000, at just 28 years old, collapsing in a White Plains hotel room from a heart attack. The Bronx that raised him is a borough where the streets don't forget and the music is born from the same violence that can swallow you whole.