When 2 Fast 2 Furious director John Singleton reached out to the rapper Ja Rule about his new role in the film, he didn’t expect to be rejected. Ja Rule, who had a cameo in the original The Fast and the Furious, was now dismissing a lead role and half a million dollars in a move that would end up benefiting Ludacris big time. As Singleton described to MTV, “[Ja Rule] was acting like he was too big to be in the sequel…He was kinda playing me to the side and I was like, ‘What? What is this sh-t?’…I then made a call. I called Ludacris.”

Completely brand new to the acting scene, Ludacris took hold of the opportunity with an excited “Why not?” attitude, filming his audition “tape literally 10 minutes before [he] was about to go on stage” when he was on tour with Eminem, according to an interview with a.list. Before he knew it, he had landed the part as Tej Parker and has stayed a part of the massive franchise ever since.

When Ludacris partnered with Pepsi for a major television ad campaign in 2002, the goal was reportedly “to attract younger urban soda drinkers,” as described by People. But soon, Bill O’ Reilly, the former Fox News commentator with multiple sexual harassment lawsuits, called on his viewers to boycott Pepsi for working with someone who “degrades women, who encourages substance abuse, and does all the things that hurt particularly the poor in our society,” in a move that would prove ridiculously ironic years later, according to HuffPost. The outrage from O’Reilly and his base had their intended effect, and Pepsi consequently pulled the TV spot. Just six months later, though, the soda brand’s hypocrisy was revealed when they aired a Super Bowl spot with Ozzy Osbourne, whose discography doesn’t exactly fit the wholesome image they seemed so concerned about, as reported by the Los Angeles Times.

In response to Pepsi’s cultural disrespect of hip-hop, music mogul Russell Simmons and the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network threatened their own boycott. The soda company was expected to “apologize to Ludacris, reinstate his commercial, and donate $5 million to the Ludacris Foundation.” Despite some initial verbal agreements, there was much back-and-forth that ended with Pepsi only partly fulfilling one demand. Ultimately, PepsiCo agreed to work with the hip-hop network and foundation in donating an annual $1 million for three years, but Ludacris’ commercial was never aired again, and no public apology was issued to the Atlanta rapper.

When Ludacris was cast in the film Crash, the Grammy-winning rapper was just getting his feet wet in the acting scene. A rookie actor among a star-studded cast, the Atlanta rapper was partly able to land a supporting role in an Oscar-winning film because of support from Don Cheadle. According to SF Gate, Cheadle, who was both an actor and producer for the film, immediately saw Ludacris’ star potential after reviewing his raw audition tape. As producer Cathy Schulman said, “As soon as Don saw that first raw tape, he said it doesn’t matter if he’s losing lines or this and that…it was very much at Don’s urging that [Ludacris] got cast.”

By the time awards season rolled around, the rapper was celebrating several wins with his cast, with Crash even controversially winning Best Picture at the Academy Awards over “Brokeback Mountain.” The role he was able to land would give him some content to rap about in “Tell Me What They Mad For,” as Ludacris makes a proud declaration on being one of the few rappers to have won a Grammy and sort-of an Oscar, as described by XXL. (Crash director Paul Haggis was actually awarded the Oscar.)

Before Ludacris was, well, Ludacris, and even before his time as Chris Lova Lova on the iconic hip-hop station Hot 97.5, the Atlanta rapper was just Christopher Bridges, an undergraduate student at Georgia State University, according to GSU. But having a career in the music industry was always part of the aspiring artist’s plan, with the young Bridges studying music management from 1998 to 1999 in anticipation of his big break as a rap star, as described by Black Enterprise.

Twenty years later, the multi-hyphenated artist once again found himself on the Georgia State campus. In 2019, Ludacris joined the university’s Creative Media Industries Institute (CMII) as artist-in-residence, where he worked with professors and mentored students, focusing “his teaching on entrepreneurship in the music and film industries,” according to ABC News. The former GSU student turned Grammy-winning artist also partnered with the College of Law and stopped by to offer students of the “Legal Life of Ludacris” course some insights, as announced on the official GSU website and Twitter.

In an interview with XXL, Ludacris revealed how he is “kind of an adrenaline junkie…which is something a lot of people don’t know.” The appeal of getting a front-row seat to all the crazy stunts that the contestants have to undertake made Ludacris excited to become the host for the Fear Factor reboot that aired in 2017. While he was typically too busy hosting to partake in the challenges himself, he did tell TV Guide that he preferred the thrill of heights to any kind of rush that comes with eating or drinking something gross. “Anything that has to do with taste aversion is something I really don’t like…just the smell alone gets me…My favorite challenge so far is probably one where these contestants are 100 feet up in the air.” 

There was one fear, though, that the rapper managed to overcome on the show — his fear of snakes. According to the Daily News, it took him a minute to get over his fear of snakes in order to hold a boa constrictor. The experience likely helped Ludacris with his own role as host and motivator to the contestants, with the entertainer finding meaning in being able to “encourage and motivate people to try to overcome their fears. Especially in the moment when they’re facing some of their worst fears.”