Lloyd Banks

Christopher Lloyd, who performs as Lloyd Banks, emerged from Jamaica, Queens, where his Puerto Rican mother raised him while his father remained incarcerated for much of his childhood. The harsh conditions of his surroundings led him toward ghetto poetry and the styles of Big Daddy Kane and Slick Rick. He abandoned high school at sixteen, regarding its rigid format as an impediment to refining his rhyme abilities.

This Queens emcee and G-Unit co-founder joined the early-2000s surge of rappers whose gritty, street-focused approach secured broad commercial appeal. Alongside fellow G-Unit members, he attained charting singles and platinum-certified albums both collectively and through solo projects, beginning with the 2004 debut The Hunger for More. Following several prominent releases, Banks concentrated chiefly on mixtapes and standalone tracks across most of the 2010s. After ending his association with G-Unit, he entered the Billboard 200 top 100 in 2021 with The Course of the Inevitable on independent imprint Money by Any Means, then continued the series with The Course of the Inevitable 2 in 2022 and The Course of the Inevitable III: Pieces of My Pain in 2023.

Local mixtape appearances preceded Banks forming G-Unit with childhood friends Tony Yayo and 50 Cent, a crew whose self-released projects, complete with original material and professional artwork, transformed street-level promotion. He remained with 50 Cent for the landmark 2003 album Get Rich or Die Tryin'. November of that year brought G-Unit's Beg for Mercy. Banks issued his first solo album for G-Unit/Interscope Records, The Hunger for More, in June 2004 and followed it with Rotten Apple two years later. Also in 2006 he achieved one of his strongest singles, “You Don't Know,” the lead track from Eminem Presents: The Re-Up, which featured 50 Cent, Eminem, and vocalist Cashis and reached number 12 on the Billboard charts.

In 2010 G-Unit announced its exit from Interscope and its new partnership with EMI for Banks' third album, H.F.M., Vol. 2 (The Hunger for More, Vol. 2). Throughout the rest of the decade he stayed active mainly via mixtapes and select acting roles, issuing titles such as 2011's The Cold Corner 2 and 2016's Halloween Havoc 3: Four Days of Fury. G-Unit itself experienced lineup shifts and inconsistent activity during this period. In 2018 Banks left the collective and discontinued work with G-Unit Records.

He resurfaced independently in 2021 with his fourth studio album, The Course of the Inevitable, which included appearances by Freddie Gibbs, Benny the Butcher, and Ransom. A follow-up, The Course of the Inevitable 2, arrived the next year and contained further collaborations, among them Benny the Butcher on “Living Proof,” Conway the Machine on “Menace,” Jadakiss on “Power Steering,” and additional guests. Banks extended the trilogy with The Course of the Inevitable III: Pieces of My Pain, released in April 2023.