![]() ![]() 50 is a terse, funny MC with more sang-froid than seems healthy, and his previous work is like 10 years of gangsta aesthetics compressed into one machinelike performer. Though there are eight or even 10 solid songs on the album, much of what makes 50 Cent stand out-his implacable perspective and humor-is missing. Dre, Eminem, Sha Money XL, and others, Get Rich is not exactly the same 50 Cent the streets celebrated. It will probably do 3 million, if not more, before the end of 2003. 50’s legit debut, Get Rich or Die Tryin’ (Shady/Aftermath/Interscope), was released on Feb. For a cool $1.6 million, Eminem’s label, Shady, and Jimmy Iovine’s Interscope Records, absorbed the only real threat to Eminem’s hegemony into their fold. A great start with a depressingly common end, people thought.Įminem, having entered the major-label bidding war for 50 Cent, emerged victorious after several months. Columbia dropped 50 Cent, and rumors circulated that he had gone back to selling crack. In 2000, 50 Cent was shot nine times in the face and body in front of his grandmother’s house. An album, Power of a Dollar, was recorded for Columbia but never reached stores (though the street knows it well now). The second single, “Thug Love,” featured Destiny’s Child moments before they became globally known. 50 Cent’s first single was one of 1999’s most unusual radio hits, “How To Rob,” a comic list of hip-hop celebrities he planned to mug: “I’d rob ODB but that’d be a waste of time … I’d rob Pun without a gun, snatch his piece and run/ This nigga weigh 400 pounds, how he gon’ catch me, son?” Ballsy and clever, the track made it clear 50 Cent was not a docile genre rapper. Orphaned at 8 when his drug-dealing mother was shot in front of him, 50 Cent turned to dealing and was stabbed once and jailed numerous times in the ‘90s. Born 27 years ago in Queens as Curtis Jackson, 50 Cent is the biggest news in hip-hop, and he’s got a back story ready for TV. It’s the kind of boast that might show up in 50 Cent’s rhymes. Selling legitimate pressings of major-label releases and gray-market mix CDs, the lone vendor said two remarkable words when I asked if he had any 50 Cent albums: “Sold out.” When you buy street CDs, nothing’s ever sold out. 25, the bootleg-CD sellers that line Canal Street in downtown Manhattan were absent, save one. ![]()
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