The last exposure I had to 50 Cent was at Voodoo in 2003, where he and G-Unit performed while at the height of “Get Rich or Die Trying’s” popularity. More so than the actual show, I fondly recall 50 was quite late getting on stage because he was waiting on baby oil.
Mercifully, on “The Massacre,” 50 comes all greased up and ready to go, turning out one of the most anticipated albums of the year and already one of the best selling.
The album is full of gunfire, references to Teflon body armor and a lot of hollow tip bullets. In fact there are so many hollow tip bullets, I’m adopting a new rating scale and giving “The Massacre” three hollow tips out of five. There are some real good tracks and some real bad ones, but because the album is 77 minutes, it’s a good bang for your buck.
From the opening salvos on the first track, 50 comes out firing. The intro track has a sound bite of a girl opening a Valentine’s Day card and discovering a lot of assault weapon fire. 50’s trying to invoke the tenuous comparison to a genuine gangster (always with the -er) Al Capone, who gave the world a real massacre on Valentine’s Day in 1929.
But if there’s anything 50 has it’s self-confidence. And I can respect that. This is no more evident than on “Piggy Bank,” where he brags about how much money he has and how much he continues to make on all of his G-Unit protégées. The chorus is an unsubtle “Clickity clank, clickity clank/ the money goes into my piggy bank” followed by a yell of “Yeah, more money.” This track also gives him the opportunity to rekindle the flames of all his rivalries, including Nas and Jadakiss, and then invite them to try and get back at him.
And in rap any press is good press. The Game, who appears on this disc, was kicked out of G-Unit one week before the release of this album, prompting real life massacre as both rapper’s cliques started firing. I’m sure this did nothing to hurt album sales, and my cynical side wonders if this was only one big publicity stunt. But regardless, 50 has no problem messing with anyone. The only personas off limits are his co-producers on the album, Dr. Dre and Eminem.
Eminem, unfortunately, contributes on only one of the more inane tracks of the album, “Gatman and Robbin,” which loosely uses the Batman theme. But Eminem already did the Batman thing with Dre on “The Eminem Show” in 2002, and this time around it’s even more lame. Despite it being the second single off the album, I can’t understand the appeal of “Candy Shop,” which manages to go above and beyond silly.
The best stuff on the album is the catchy “Disco Inferno,” the first single, and “Just A Lil’Bit” where 50’s affable slur shines. Another great song on the album is the risky “A Baltimore Love Thing.” When only listening to the hook, the song seems like another love ballad, but the lyrics have 50 rhyming from the point of view of a heroin addict, singing his love to a female addict. It’s a brilliant personification of addiction with chilling lyrics like “If you give birth, I’ll already be in love with your kid” and “I found pleasure in pleasin’ you, like a real man should.” It’s a ballsy move, despite the fact that Nas took the same approach from the point of view of a gun about a decade ago.
One complaint is that it seems like the album wasn’t put together properly. It never seems to find the right flow, coming across more as a mix tape. Perhaps this has something to do with the liner notes reading like a book and no single person being solely behind the driver’s seat, either at the production or mixing stage. But in general, the album works and has some great party tracks that we’ll be hearing for a long time to come.
Pat McDermott can be reached at [email protected].
