Rapper & G-Unit Member — South Jamaica, Queens
Tony Yayo's Jacob & Co. Epic X Chrono: Queens to the Wrist
Tony Yayo was present at the founding of G-Unit, survived the early years on pure loyalty, and watched the whole empire rise from a South Jamaica block. The Jacob & Co. Epic X Chrono 43 is the watch that era built — designed by the same New York jeweler who dressed hip-hop royalty at its peak.
| Tony Yayo spotted with the Jacob & Co. Epic X Chrono 43 in titanium. |
Jacob & Co. Epic X Chrono 43 — grade 5 titanium, skeletonized, X-lug architecture. |
Born Marvin Bernard in 1978, Tony Yayo grew up in South Jamaica, Queens — the same neighborhood, the same streets, the same gravitational field as Curtis James Jackson III, better known as 50 Cent. When G-Unit formed in the early 2000s, Yayo was there from the beginning, a founding member of a crew that would become one of the most commercially dominant forces in rap history. The timing, however, was complicated: as G-Unit's star was rising with the success of 50 Cent's Get Rich or Die Tryin' and the unit's own albums, Yayo was incarcerated, serving time on a weapons charge. He was shouted out on "Many Men (Wish Death)" while behind bars — referenced by name, kept in the story, held in the unit's identity even while absent from it.
He came home in 2003 and immediately stepped into the momentum. His 2005 debut Thoughts of a Predicate Felon, released on G-Unit/Interscope, debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, buoyed by the single "So Seductive." More than two decades on from those peak years, Yayo has remained exactly what he always was: a loyal G-Unit soldier. Mixtapes, tours, 50 Cent projects — wherever the unit moves, Yayo is there. In an industry built on calculated reinvention and strategic loyalty, that kind of unconditional consistency is its own form of identity.
And the watch on his wrist is the one that New York gave the rap world at exactly that moment.
"G-Unit for life. That's not just something you say — that's something you live." — Tony Yayo
Timepiece
Jacob & Co. Epic X Chrono 43 — Grade 5 Titanium
Jacob & Co. was founded by Jacob Arabo — Jacob the Jeweler — a Bukharan Jewish immigrant who set up in New York's Diamond District and became the go-to craftsman for hip-hop's elite in the 1990s and 2000s. Jay-Z, Diddy, 50 Cent, the entire upper tier of rap's golden commercial era came through Arabo's shop. When Jacob & Co. moved into watchmaking, it brought the same philosophy: maximum visual impact, serious technical content underneath the spectacle, and an aesthetic built for the wrists of people who had arrived at the very top.
The Epic X Chrono 43 is the watch that architecture made. The X-shaped lug system is the signature design statement — bold, geometric, impossible to mistake for anything else. The fully skeletonized dial exposes the automatic JCAA05 caliber in full, with colored accents visible through the open dial architecture. Vertical chronograph pushers sit flush with the case. The grade 5 titanium case delivers the chrome finish and heft of steel at significantly reduced weight. This is not a watch that hedges.
| Reference | Epic X Chrono 43, Grade 5 Titanium (Chrome finish) |
| Case | 43mm grade 5 titanium, skeletonized, 200m water resistance |
| Movement | JCAA05 automatic, 50-hour power reserve, sapphire caseback |
| Market price | Retail approx. $30,000–$38,000 USD depending on configuration |
Jacob the Jeweler and the Watch That Hip-Hop Built
There is a specific moment in American music history when the luxury watch became central to hip-hop's visual language, and Jacob Arabo was at the center of it. His Diamond District shop was the place where the music industry's biggest names came to commission the pieces that would appear on album covers, in music videos, in the photographs that defined the era. When Jacob & Co. crossed from jewellery into watchmaking, it carried all of that cultural capital with it. The Epic X was not designed for a Zurich banker. It was designed for the world Jacob had spent decades adorning.
Tony Yayo belongs to that world as surely as anyone. He came up in it, survived it, helped shape it. The Epic X Chrono, with its skeletonized architecture and X-lug geometry, is a watch that could only have emerged from that specific intersection of New York ambition, hip-hop aesthetics, and genuine technical watchmaking. Wearing it is not an homage to an era — it is a continuation of one.
Why This Watch on This Wrist
Tony Yayo's identity has always been rooted in origin. South Jamaica, Queens. G-Unit. The block. Twenty-plus years in the game and he has never distanced himself from any of it — no reinvention, no calculated pivot, no attempt to outgrow the original story. The Jacob & Co. Epic X Chrono is the watch for that posture. It is unapologetically loud, deeply New York in its DNA, and backed by real mechanical substance in the form of an in-house caliber and grade 5 titanium architecture. It does not pretend to be Swiss restraint. It knows exactly what it is and makes no apology for it. On Yayo's wrist, that is not a coincidence — it is a statement of perfect alignment between a man and the object he chose to mark his time with.
And at Spot.Watch — that's always worth noticing.
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