50 Cent’s rapper friend Bang Em Smurf is staying in a taxpayer-funded UK asylum hotel – after being jailed over a shootout in the US

One of rapper 50 Cent’s group G-Unit is an asylum seeker living in a UK hotel at the taxpayers’ expense. 

Bang Em Smurf, whose real name is Daniel Calliste, was a short-lived member of the hip hop posse – even appearing in the video for the iconic 2003 chart topper In Da Club. 

Calliste is now living in the Novotel hotel near Stevenage in Hertfordshire, which is being used to house asylum seekers, The Sun reported.  

The 102-room, four-star property is currently closed to the public. 

Calliste is believed to have fled to the UK at the end of 2024 after claiming he was under threat from gang members in his homeland of Trinidad.

He was born there but emigrated to America and started rapping age 15, ending up as part of the original G-Unit line-up and unofficially 50 Cent’s head of security.  

‘You couldn’t breathe the same air as 50 without going through Smurf. That was his shooter, his gunner,’ fellow Queens Domination told Vice in 2005. 

However the pair later fell out when Calliste got arrested after a New York shoot out in 2004, and 50 Cent – real name Curtis Jackson – refused to pay Smurf’s $75,000 bail. 

Bang Em Smurf, real name Daniel Calliste, was a short-lived member of the hip hop posse – even appearing in the video for the iconic 2003 chart topper In Da Club

However, he is currently living an asylum seeker in a UK hotel at the taxpayers’ expense after claiming he is at threat from gangs in his native Trinidad

Rap superstar 50 Cent with his fellow G-Unit members Lloyd Banks (left) and Young Buck (right)

‘That’s when I first started working with Domination. I had a mixtape with Domination, and I’m on the block and my homie got a situation, and this dude he had a problem with knocked him out,’ Calliste told AllHipHop.com. 

‘Laid him flat out in front of me, and that’s my dude. So we did what we did. Dudes we got in the conflict with kept it gutter. 

‘They got hit up, they didn’t say nothing – they didn’t go to no hospital in Queens. I respect their gangsta.’

Smurf ended up serving three-and-a-half years for gun possession after the incident and was deported back to Trinidad upon his release. 

A source said: ‘It’s crazy he was let in after being deported from the US with a criminal record for violent offences.

‘His history is well known. He is being supported by the taxpayer.’

Calliste claims he came to the UK as Universal was planning to adapt his 2018 memoir Wisdom of a Wolf: The G Behind the Unit into a film. 

He was also spotted enjoying his 44th birthday in Battersea in South London earlier this year.

The Novotel is currently closed to the public as it is exclusively housing asylum seekers 

Members of the group “G-Unit,” Young Buck, left, 50 Cent, center, and Lloyd Banks perform at the MTV studios in New York’s Times Square as part of MTV’s ‘Spankin’ New Music Week,’ Thursday, Nov. 13, 2003

It is believed that Calliste’s application for asylum has been rejected and he will be deported back to his native Trinidad.

He told The Sun: ‘There ain’t no story. You’re talking to the horse’s mouth. I’m telling you, that’s fake news.’