2008 Woodie Awards
Got Change?
Is 50 Cent losing his genius? Or just expanding on it?
Tyler Adams
Issue date: 3/9/05 Section: Arts and Entertainment
Guess who's back? 50 Cent. Wow, that's an ironic way to begin this column. Guess Who's Back is my favorite 50 Cent album, and I'm betting you haven't heard it. Released independently, distributed by Landspeed Records, it's a genius piece of underground gangsta rap. 50, pre-Dre, pre-Eminem, all hunger and anger and straight ghetto snarl.
The album you do know is Get Rich Or Die Tryin'. It's sold 11 million copies, diamond certified worldwide, and it's also pretty good. 50 takes the prodigal child of the hood stance to the TRL audience successfully, and with Dr. Dre helming the production, manages to sell death threats to 14-year-old chicks everywhere. Admittedly, the album was saddled with a play for the ladies - the hideous Nate Dogg duet "21 Questions," a blatant thug-love epic that propelled the album into the stratosphere. After 50's ascendance to fame, he introduced his group G-Unit (with a platinum album, Beg For Mercy): him, Lloyd Banks, Young Buck, and recent addition The Game.
Here's the thing. G-Unit's better than 50. Buck's album Straight Outta Cashville and Game's The Documentary are both a few notches above Get Rich Or Die Tryin,' and Banks' album isn't any worse. Here's another thing: On February 28th, 50 Cent, the biggest rapper in the world, kicked The Game, arguably the hottest rapper in the world, out of G-Unit, arguably the highest-profile rap group in the world, on the radio in New York. (To make things even more unnerving, 50 happens to be from Queens, and The Game happens to be from Compton. Looking back to the mid-90's East Coast-West Coast beef that poisoned hip-hop's proverbial well.) When the news of 50's on-air tirade, backed by the other members of G-Unit, hit, my reaction was: Whaaat? Can't they all just get along?
Apparently not. Getting along isn't 50's M.O. Never has been. 50, né Curtis Jackson, thrives on chaos. His underground fame came from beef with other rappers, a list beginning and ending with former pop icon Ja Rule, which 50 manipulated brilliantly, with a couple of excellent diss tracks, including the underground "Life's On The Line" and "Back Down" off of Get Rich Or Die Tryin'. However, 50's method might not work so well this time. As he said in the documentary Beef (a good DVD purchase if you can find it cheap), "It's not like I just have rap beef with [Ja Rule]. I don't like this little n----." Is that just cause for a lyrical war? In the world of hip-hop, the answer is often yes, but in that case, 50 has a long list of people he doesn't like.
The album you do know is Get Rich Or Die Tryin'. It's sold 11 million copies, diamond certified worldwide, and it's also pretty good. 50 takes the prodigal child of the hood stance to the TRL audience successfully, and with Dr. Dre helming the production, manages to sell death threats to 14-year-old chicks everywhere. Admittedly, the album was saddled with a play for the ladies - the hideous Nate Dogg duet "21 Questions," a blatant thug-love epic that propelled the album into the stratosphere. After 50's ascendance to fame, he introduced his group G-Unit (with a platinum album, Beg For Mercy): him, Lloyd Banks, Young Buck, and recent addition The Game.
Here's the thing. G-Unit's better than 50. Buck's album Straight Outta Cashville and Game's The Documentary are both a few notches above Get Rich Or Die Tryin,' and Banks' album isn't any worse. Here's another thing: On February 28th, 50 Cent, the biggest rapper in the world, kicked The Game, arguably the hottest rapper in the world, out of G-Unit, arguably the highest-profile rap group in the world, on the radio in New York. (To make things even more unnerving, 50 happens to be from Queens, and The Game happens to be from Compton. Looking back to the mid-90's East Coast-West Coast beef that poisoned hip-hop's proverbial well.) When the news of 50's on-air tirade, backed by the other members of G-Unit, hit, my reaction was: Whaaat? Can't they all just get along?
Apparently not. Getting along isn't 50's M.O. Never has been. 50, né Curtis Jackson, thrives on chaos. His underground fame came from beef with other rappers, a list beginning and ending with former pop icon Ja Rule, which 50 manipulated brilliantly, with a couple of excellent diss tracks, including the underground "Life's On The Line" and "Back Down" off of Get Rich Or Die Tryin'. However, 50's method might not work so well this time. As he said in the documentary Beef (a good DVD purchase if you can find it cheap), "It's not like I just have rap beef with [Ja Rule]. I don't like this little n----." Is that just cause for a lyrical war? In the world of hip-hop, the answer is often yes, but in that case, 50 has a long list of people he doesn't like.