50 Cent's "Street King" Movement

I really understand and empathize with 50 Cent here. Here in Guam, people aren't really starving but they're doing something really close - dying of Diabetes. Good health doesn't come cheap and much of the world isn't enjoying it.

50 Cent - I'm On It

I concede with the guys at Ill Roots. 50 seems like he's actually putting some effort into making his sound different.

50 Cent - I'm On It

50 Cent Explains The Benefits Of Delaying His Fifth Solo Album

New from Hip Hop DX:

Fif speaks on how he approached penning material with his upcoming LP.

50 Cent has been taking his time with his untitled fifth solo album, a tactic that’s allowed him to better focus on his material. During a press conference at the Festival de Casablanca 2011, Fif explained that he was always racing to meet deadlines with previous albums, but took the Eminem and Dr. Dre approach with this LP.

“I’ve worked longer on this album than any of my other projects. I’ve had the opportunity to evaluate the things that I created initially, and go back and revamp things and change things around a bit,” he said. “Both Em and Dre have had opportunities to critique themselves, when I was always on the shot clock. So this time, I get a chance to really make sure I feel like it’s going to be the right music for this time period.”

Like with his debut Get Rich or Die Tryin', the G-Unit general is looking towards his personal life for inspiration on his next release, but realizes the stakes are high.

“My material comes from my actual experience. In a lot of ways, the things that I’m saying, it doesn’t necessarily reflect my mind state at the time, but my first album had all of the dysfunction that I was being exposed to. It went on to be the largest debuting Hip Hop album, selling 12 million records. The task of recreating that came up. So I had to figure out new ways to write things or new portions of my experience to create music based on those things. Now, this album, it’s more creative, I feel like, because I’ve’ had to find things away from those things that I’ve done continuously.”

50 Cent Talks Working With Eminem

From MTV:

50 Cent is no stranger to the headlines, and the always gregarious rap star entertained listeners this weekend on with a phone call to DJ Whoo Kid’s Shade 45 show shortly after an interview with Hip Hop twin titans Bad Meets Evil in where Eminem and Royce Da 5’9discussed a wide array of topics. However, it was 50 Cent’s revelation of working with Slim Shady on new tracks and his comments on Amber Rose’s leaked nude photos that got the most attention.

50 Cent, enjoying a holiday weekend on the cusp of his 36th birthday, spoke with Whoo Kid at length and even joked about his much ballyhooed new hairstyle – cleverly quipping that his hairdo got more attention than more pressing matters. The G-Unit general also went into great detail about his upcoming untitled fifth studio album and going back to his hardcore Hip Hop roots. Fif’s big reveal, however, was that he’ll be working alongside Eminem again – the man who gave him his big break.

“I recorded four songs in Detroit with Em,” said 50 in talking up his upcoming record. “I did two with Just Blaze, a Boi-1da joint and I did something with Alex Da Kid. I mean I got some heat.” 50 also shared that Eminem serves not only as a collaborator but a part-time A&R for the rapper, helping shape and finalize his album material. “When me and Em get together, if you look at all the collaborations, we made records that were really strong album cuts,” said 50. “We always go into it that way.”

Fif will never be accused of being a shrinking violet, especially when to commenting on the news of the day and the Queens native most certainly chimed in on the steamy nude flicks of model and Wiz Khalifa’s better half Amber Rose. Fif hum offered, “Well, at least it didn’t look bad” – and 50 continued to go in from there. “Let me tell you something, things like that don’t hurt, that’s promotion.” An observant 50 Cent remarked, “Her shoes changed in the pictures” – along with stating that Amber Rose took those photos with the intention of them being seen.

Fif continued by saying that Amber Rose’s photos were not the work of a random moment of spontaneity but rather a planned thing in where she crafted the seductive photos at her behest. 50 also said the photos may have been taken for a significant other but was certainly done under Rose’s directions.

Rapper Big Pooh & Roc 'C' Form The Young Americans, Plan July EP

From Hip Hop DX:

A Carolina-California collaboration is taking place, involving members of the Little Brother and Stones Throw families.

Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina emcee Rapper Big Poohand Oxnard, California emcee Roc 'C' have announced the formation of a new group: The Young Americans. The former Stones Throw Records artist and the Little Brother member have released the single "Set It Off," produced by S1 of Strange Fruit Project, and co-producer of Kanye West's 2010 hit single, "Power" .

The pair is planning a yet untitled EP for later this month. In November of last year, Roc released the Don't Stop EPwith Stones Throw, while Pooh released full-length solo project Fat Boy Fresh: For Member's Only, Volume 1 this April.

50 Cent - Bully And Opportunist?

Nona Willis Aronowitz, writing for the online magazine Good, took aim at rap phenom Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson. Articles like this pop up quite a bit and 50 Cent along with 50's label mate at Shady Records, Eminem, are often the targets. Both have uttered alot of homophobic stuff along with misogynist lyrics.Aronowitz takes special issue with 50 for his writing an anti-bullying novel while continuously producing music that promotes and legitimizes violence:

Millions of kids look up to 50 Cent and will take anything to heart that's attached to his name. So if he's calling for an end to violence in the schoolyard, perhaps he shouldn't rap about shooting people. If he cares about bullying, maybe he shouldn't tweet about how gay guys should kill themselves. While he's at it, he might refrain from constantly starting shit with other rappers.

To be fair, a rapper writing a book about the violence that poor, black kids endure daily in school could give some much-needed visibility to an issue that seldom gets the spotlight. In recent years, news stories of homophobia-related violence have gotten far more attention than pervasive urban bullying, not only because they have often involved a suicide, but because anti-gay activism is a far friendlier cause to white, affluent people.

On this website, I've defended Eminem against similar attacks. However, Eminem is alot easier to defend than 50. Eminem has provided an epic level of diversity in his discography, showing a personality that ranges from frightening wife beater ("Kim") to serial killer ("3 AM") all the way to hyper-responsible and loving father ("When I'm Gone") and Alcoholics Anonymous spokesman and motivational speaker ("Not Afraid"). That sort of range shows Marshall to be pretty honest, maybe too honest for most people's tastes.

That's not a range that 50 has. 50 has legitimate talent and makes songs that are hard to not like. However, his range is shorter than Danny Devito. From his early 2000s mixtapes to his latest releases, all of his songs are either about shooting people or macking on hoes. 50 likes to describe himself as an "artist" but artists are not this limited by definition. His lack of depth is no small reason why, despite his wealth and influence, the rap game is leaving him behind. There's simply nothing new to his story and he isn't willing to give us anything new.

Does he think rap fans are stupid? Maybe. There were alot of comic book creators back at the beginning of the medium that hid their names and wrote comics that were orgies of sex and violence (look up EC Comics) because they thought it would be a good way to make a buck. Making his motto "Get Rich Or Die Trying," 50 has never hidden the fact that he's in it for the money and he may simply not respect the genre enough as an art form to play around with it.

50 has put on multiple masks when talking to the media: a philanthropist when he talks about his organization G-Unity, a hardcore gangsta when talking to rap magazines and blogs and a businessman and smart pragmatist when talking finance or making business moves in the soft drink world (50 Cent himself helped make Vitamin Water a national brand and spur a copycat launch of similar brands). 50's a charming guy but that sort of double dealing masks a lack of honesty. As he's said before, hate it or love it.

50 Cent Unveils His Album Plans

From Hip Hop DX:

The G-Unit general took to Twitter to tell fans that his delayed album will hit stores this year.

After bringing his label woes to light, 50 Cent has revealed that his previously delayed LP will land in stores before the end of the year. Responding to fans on Twitter, the G-Unit leader revealed that the album will drop in November to coincide with the release of his new headphones line.

50 Cent - Outlaw

50 Cent Got Rich But Is Still Trying

I am really feeling for Curtis Jackson. Ever since Get Rich Or Die Trying, 50 has been trying again and again to recreate that buzz he once had. Whether it's been through acting in a host of movies that all were particularly unmemorable or now releasing enough material online to warrant a full fledged album, 50 desperately wants to be the top dog again.

From his rants on songs like "Run Up On Me," where he says people "act like the gift God gave me is gone," it sounds like 50 feels rejected. This is one-dimensional. What 50 needs to realize is that the audience has grown and he hasn't.

From Kanye West to Drake to Kenan Bell (watch for him), the hip-hop audience seems to have accepted men who wear their emotions and human frailty on their sleeves. From watching 50 in music and elsewhere in media, he strikes me as someone who, because of a harsh coming of age, learned to wire shut his inner most and talk tough to survive. His songs all sound the same as what he was doing in 2003. There's no growth at all. Even his album mates on Shady Records - like Bizarre of D12, Eminem and new signee Yelawolf - have shown growth as artists. Why can't he?

50 Cent Is Pimpin Curly

50 Cent has a new comedy website called ThisIs50Comedy.com. 50 does have a wicked sense of humor (listen to his mixtapes) but I don't know what the hell is going on here. Maybe you do. Haha.

By the way, if you've ever seen the TV show Red Dwarf, 50 Cent as Pimpin Curly looks a whole lot like Cat, played by Danny John Jules:

The History of The Simpsons

I'm not so sure about Will, Aaron, Aneesah or our other writers but I am a massive fan of The Simpsons. WatchMojo has been doing some great short histories of creators ranging from Matt Groening to Dr. Dre and this only adds to it.



And The Simpsons isn't totally irrelevant to the subject matter of BOI. Here is a great caricature of Bart Simpson with famous rapper 50 Cent!

Hip-Hop As Social Commentary

Have you been visiting the Blood Is One Twitter page? No? Well, you should!

Will Pierce is the cofounder of Blood Is One. He isn't as prolific of a writer as I am but actually says some really brilliant stuff almost regularly. On the Twitter page he wrote:

The question of how much rappers should provide an example is the only mainstream debate about ethics in art the last 30 years.

Hiphop provides the only satisfactory compromise between naturalism and romanticism in contemporary art.

No other artform but hiphop has successfully decried the situation of a cultural underclass while trumpeting success beyond it.

That's in abstract- substance, means is another matter. It at least engages the listener to the thump and challenges them with a message.

Modern art does not invite question, fears it; hiphop is cultural dialogue. It's like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder.

Where would country music be if it had a sinuous system of self-criticism of hiphop? The social dialogue collapsed, biting became the form.

Hip-hop has been good and bad. All music genres have big problems and the biggest one that I have noticed for rap is that, in escaping the hood, rappers and DJs often bring the hood with them. For a long time, hip-hop was dominated by entourages of rapper's friends from back in the day who they've brought along in order to spread the wealth. Think Outsidaz, Ruff Ryderz, D12 and G-Unit. That doesn't happen that much anymore. Now record labels are filled with business ventures.

Despite becoming more and more business inclined, however, hip-hop manages to "keep it real" in a way that the lubricated genre of country, which Will mentions, rarely does. Rappers frequently start and own their own labels. Raekwon has been releasing his last few albums independently, directly to his consumers, while Eminem has owned his own Sirius satellite radio station and 50 Cent has used his fame to launch an acting career. This doesn't happen so much with rock musicians, who often are total messes and sneer at the business ropes that get tied around them when they ignore them. When trying to grab for money, rock musicians like the guys at Metallica often do so in reaction, using the courts to give them all sorts of copyright money while guys in hip-hop use piracy and bootleg music to their own benefit. Country music, meanwhile, with a few exceptions, has totally sold itself to corporate radio, with the only hope of breaking the hold being the rise of alt country guys like Jamey Johnson through iTunes and the internet.

As Will Pierce said, "Modern art does not invite question, fears it; hiphop is cultural dialogue. It's like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder." Hip-hop puts right up front alot of stuff that we prefer not to recognize. While educators talk theories about socially constructed gender roles, hip-hop shows us what happens in real life to young men when dad leaves home and mom drops her kids off with grandma so she can work all day. It shows us - through the tales of former drug dealers 50 Cent and Jay-Z or Yelawolf, who hails from methodone lab hotspot Alabama - what the drug war has done to African American, poor white and Hispanic communities.

In one song called "I'm Paranoid," 50 Cent declares, "We thought the dope and the coke would help us escape poverty. When that didn't work, we resorted to armed robbery." In a duet with Wu-Tang veteran Raekwon, Yelawolf called "I Wish," rhymed of life in the south, "Confederate flags I see 'em, On pick up trucks with the windows down, Why's he playing Beanie Sigel? Because his daddy was a dope man. Lynyrd Skynyrd never sang about slinging keys of coke, man." Even when it thinks it's apolitical or even ignorant, hip-hop packs more social commentary than your average indie rock or country band will in their entire career.

In fact, when you think about it in retrospect, the fact that academia wasn't pouring over rap lyrics and relating them to modern society shows academia might not be that clued into American societal dynamics.

50 Cent - The Paper (I Get It)

Download it here.

Selling Syllables

I'd like to point out an unlikely song called "Syllables," which couples legendary rappers Jay-Z, Eminem, 50 Cent and Dr. Dre all on one track to talk about how much the music industry has changed. "Now we don't even know what are hits, is it the beat or is it the chorus, is it the finger snap or the same 808 clap" is my favorite takeaway line (808 is in reference to the legendary Roland drum machine, click here for a demonstration), while Jay-Z talks about tying his album in with a reality show.

Are musicians selling songs, name recognition, magazine sales, ringtones, movies or what? There was a phase a couple years ago in which musicians from Gwen Stefani to Jay-Z made bank off of clothing lines but that may have just been a fad in response to the decline in record sales associated with filesharing.

50 Cent - When I Come Back

It's nice to see someone is giving 50 good beats again.

Yelawolf - The Next Great White Hope

Yelawolf just got signed along with the supergroup Slaughterhouse to Shady Records, the label that Eminem started and that launched the career of 50 Cent. The guy is really interesting - half Cherokee and a small town boy from Alabama who once lived in the Bay Area. Slaughterhouse is probably going to be pleasing to hip hop aficionados like yours truly but Yelawolf may actually bring in cross over appeal and wreak in alot of love from white people too scared to touch hip-hop that doesn't look like them.

Besides all that, Yelawolf is mad talented and has paid his dues with mixtapes like Trunk Musik, which is available to download free. His lyrical ability is proved by his ability to spit over the best tracks in hip hop canon, like in this Outkast/Mobb Depp compilation:

Yelawolf OutKast and Mobb Deep Freestyle from I'm Really Popular! on Vimeo.