“Realness,” in hip-hop terms, is the true wealth of any gangsta worth his tough talk. And right now, no rapper is richer than 50 Cent. How else do you characterize a man who admits he was still dealing crack when he received the advance from his first record deal? Whose first single, 1999’s “How to Rob,” was a heist fantasy that sparked a beef with nearly every rapper in the business? Who was stabbed in a March 2000 fracas with rival Ja Rule’s crew, shot nine times (once in the jaw) in an unrelated incident two months later and was dropped by his label, Columbia, for fear of more violence? Granted, mayhem is no guarantee of skills; there have been plenty of genuine thugs-turned-rappers who couldn’t properly rhyme the couplets from Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham if they read them off a Teleprompter. A 27-year-old from Queens, New York, 50 is prodigiously skilled, although not in the lyrical-acrobat manner of Jay-Z or Eminem. Instead, his talent is seeming clever and likable in the midst of menace. Call it an Everythug appeal. Despite having been shot more times than Cindy Crawford, he still cracks nonchalant, loading his hit “Wanksta” with this deadpan outlaw boast: “N!ggas say they gon’ murder 50, how?/We ride around with guns the size of Lil’ Bow Wow.” 50’s outrageousness and charismatic, lazy drawl caused a frenzy last year when he released multiple mix tapes with his G-Unit clique, supplying them directly to street vendors and generating the biggest buzz in hip-hop since the heyday of Biggie Smalls. These tapes found a booster in Eminem, who signed 50 to his Shady Records label for a reported $1 million. Review cont'd below...
The feverishly anticipated Get Rich or Die Tryin’ is a dark, despair-ridden collection of sociopathic vignettes. On “Heat,” 50 celebrates the joy of firearms over a Dr. Dre–produced track that perversely substitutes gunshots for drum snares. The nasty, Southern bounce–style “Blood Hound” features the fractured refrain “I love to pump crack/Love to stay strapped/Love to squeeze gats,” which he spits like a gleeful schoolkid during recess. Even at their most nihilistic, these 16 songs (plus three bonus tracks) resonate melodically, like Eminem’s most haunting material. Credit 50’s gift for crafting indelible, sing-songy hooks, epitomized by “Wanksta”, his bubbly cadence on the Dre-produced radio monster “In da Club” and “21 Questions,” which sounds like his next big smash. It’s the closest thing to a love song he’s ever recorded: 50 imagines scenes of misfortune — falling off, jail time, working at Burger King — and gently quizzes a girl about whether she’ll stick by him. Of course, most of 50’s material is far less sensitive — at least toward others... Abetted by a suitably dramatic Eminem-produced beat, “Patiently Waiting” addresses the threats that follow 50: “If I get shot today my phone’ll stop ringin’ again.” Em’s guest verse on the song even cryptically likens 50 to slain rap gods Biggie, Tupac Shakur and Harlem cult hero Big L — a comparison likely to make 50 hug his ever-present bulletproof vest even tighter. “Many Men (Wish Death),” a frightening composition in the vein of Snoop Dogg’s “Murder Was the Case,” is the most powerful track. Starting with a dramatization of 50’s shooting, the song unravels as an inner conflict as he turns alternately enraged, arrogant, contemplative, desolate and tormented, his mood swinging with each line. Then it concludes with an eerie, vengeful announcement about his attacker: “In the Bible it says what goes around comes around/Homie shot me, three weeks later he got shot down/Now it’s clear that I’m here for a real reason/’Cause he got hit like I got hit, but he ain’t fuckin’ breathin’.” 50 is as much a threat to his adversaries as to himself. And the warrior title of his wild debut might be wrong: He might get rich and die trying. - Chairman Mao. An era-defining album, revisit it today...
