CD review: 50 Cent: Get Rich or Die Tryin' (original) (raw)
None of the many attacks Kim Howells has launched during his brief period as culture minister has attracted quite as much indignation as his recent lambasting of gangsta rap. In its wake, Howells was decried as everything from a white supremacist to a Simon and Garfunkel fan. But one glaring question was left unasked. Precisely what gangsta rap is Howells talking about? Leaving aside the dismal posturing of the So Solid Crew, there hasn't been a gangsta-rap hit in Britain since the mid-1990s. With that in mind, his remarks seem less reprehensible than rather quaint. Like a boozy dad on a wedding reception dancefloor, he thinks he's showing the youngsters a thing or two, but he's hopelessly out of time. Which opprobrious youth cult will catch his eagle eye next? Teddy boys? Flappers?
But Howell's blushes may yet be spared. This week, Get Rich or Die Tryin', an album by ex-crack dealer Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, sold 872,000 copies in the US. That's more than every other album in the US top 10 combined. Released on Eminem's label, it opens with a track called What Up Gangsta. Its lyrics unashamedly retread the themes of guns, murder, robbery and drugs. It would appear that the gangsta-rap revival is suddenly upon us.
Or perhaps not. The album's success may have less to do with its lyrical content than with Curtis Jackson's lifestyle. Petty arguments between rappers are commonplace. They warrant their own slang term: warring rappers "have beef" with each other. Jackson, however, appears to have beef with the entire hip-hop scene. He has beef with Jay-Z and the Wu Tang Clan, who took exception to Jackson fantasising about mugging other rappers on his 1999 single How To Rob. He has beef with Ja Rule and his Murder Inc posse, some of whom claim to have stabbed Jackson in a New York studio in 2000. He has beef with Benzino, a minor rapper who recently dubbed Eminem the "rap Hitler". Frankly, if he had any more beef, he could open a chain of butcher's shops.
His notoriety has spiralled into shocking violence. Two months after he was stabbed, Jackson was shot nine times. Some sources have suggested that the murder of Run DMC's Jam Master Jay last October was another botched attempt on Jackson's life. Last month, the reception of his management company was sprayed with bullets. Jackson now claims to carry a loaded gun and wear a bulletproof vest at all times.
His recent history is so lurid that it's hard to be objective about the music on Get Rich Or Die Tryin'. But Jackson himself doesn't seem particularly interested in objectivity: the album's stand-out track, Many Men, opens with a dramatisation of his shooting, and his rapping really catches fire during Wanksta and Life's on the Line, both hectoring attacks on Murder Inc. Jackson has a darkly comic turn of phrase that is frequently startling: at one point he charmingly offers to "have the paramedics wrapping your fuckin' head like a Hindu".
His slurred delivery is distinctive and original, but not quite powerful enough to stop the excitement level leaping when Eminem makes a frantic guest appearance on Patiently Waiting. A mass of producers offer a sound infinitely more grimy than the pop hip-hop of Ja Rule or Nelly. Dr Dre's contributions stand out - the sparse orchestral samples and snaking chorus of single In da Club are irresistible - but the music on Get Rich Or Die Tryin' avoids risks, in much the same way that Jackson's lyrics seldom deviate from the well-worn gangsta path. Curiously, Jackson emerges from the album as an essentially conservative figure, making outrageous comments for the sake of it, revelling in his notoriety. 50 Cent may have more in common with Kim Howells than either of them would like to admit.
Nevertheless, 50 Cent's success provokes deeply troubling thoughts about the American public's attitude to male rappers. The last major black hardcore rap superstar was DMX, a diagnosed manic-depressive who sold 13m albums. His success coincided with a series of arrests: his charge sheet included rape, harassment and assault, possession of weapons and drug paraphernalia, a stabbing and child endangerment. His audience were not buying music, but buying into the notion of a black star as a self-destructive maniac. That notion was underlined when DMX began his movie career. At a test screening of the film Romeo Must Die, producer Joel Silver noted that the audience went crazy when DMX's character was killed. It was as if they were pleased to see him die.
Three years on, almost a million Americans bought Get Rich Or Die Tryin' in its first four days of release. They could have had little idea what the record sounded like - he was virtually unknown in the US before the shooting incident - but they bought it anyway. Like DMX, Curtis Jackson's appeal is less about music than about a particularly macabre freak show. Buy now, before someone kills him. That seems more chilling than any of the violent threats and swaggering gun-talk Get Rich Or Die Tryin' has to offer.