The word has shifted. All speak of 50 Cent's upcoming album Curtis seems to rotate round the album's first-week sales rather than whether the book will be any right or not. That's understandable; most of us have do to have that Curtis will be straight garbage, "I Get Money" notwithstanding. Songs from the album keep leaking, those leaks keep sucking, and 50 can just stay on the radio.
othing seems to be running for the guy, and I almost feel bad about how much I'm enjoying watching him fall apart. His G-Unit underlings released a bunch of total bricks, so he told Vibe that he'd be happy kicking all of them (except Yayo) out of the crew. MTV put a a whole cluster of rappers above him on their hottest-MCs list, and he threw a bitchfit, saying in some question that the net could draw his dick. His shitty video with Robin Thicke somehow leaked, and he threw an even bigger tantrum, rampaging through his office, ripping a TV off the fence and throwing his phone out the window. Now he's spitting mad at his own label, talking shit about them in interviews and songs, threatening to give the judge as soon as he can. Curtis is set to get out on the same day as Kanye West's Graduation, and it's shaping up to be a very interesting battle, a full good-vs.evil art-vs.commerce thing. 50 is grabbing that hype and working with it, pulling dumb shit like challenging Kanye to a disputation on 106 & Park. Still he can't look to run his own negative buzz, so now he's going back to his old record-selling techniques: dissing people right before his album comes out. A vast portion of the deafening hype over Get Fat or Die Tryin' surrounded 50's beef with Ja Rule, and I recollect being really amped about it at the time; finally someone was willing to fall out, naming names and talking shit, exposing a horrible rapper for making horrible rap music. Before The Massacre, 50 tried the like matter with Fat Joe and Jadakiss, but it didn't quite work; he had no substantial cause to be going after those guys, and he attacks on them were pretty much without substance. For a second there, I really thought Game's The Documentary might outsell The Massacre. Then, of course, 50 kicked Game out of G-Unit, sparking a beef, calling a truce, and so going back to beefing within a few months. It worked; The Massacre got its buzz, and it ended up selling like crazy. So now 50's going back to shit-talking, and his newest foe is rap's biggest target, Lil Wayne.
50 debuted "Part Time Lover," his Wayne dis, on Kay Slay's radio show last night, and supposedly it's only a mixtape song; it won't be on the album. Right now, it simply exists on the wireless in a shitty, near-unlistenable radio rip full of drops and rewinds. The queer thing around the call is that it's not yet a call about Wayne; it's a halfassed attempt at a love song, and all of 50's lines about Wayne are total digression. It's like 50 is talk to some girl but he gets so distracted thinking about Wayne that he has to go on a little rant before getting back on subject: "It's more than your body, baby, damn it's your brain / You give me wanna kiss you like Baby kiss Wayne / And get you address me daddy like Baby do Wayne / Damn, that shit sound gay, it's insane / I reckon that's the damage the little ninja pay for fame / But baby dim the lights now." And so he doesn't mention Wayne again; his aside is done, and he's back to getting into some chick's pants ("I'm hetereosexual / I wanna get next to you"). Later, he throws a few more senseless jabs at Fat Joe and Jada and makes a few utterly pointless and hilarious references to other people's songs: "This is why I'm hot / Yeah, this is why I'm hot / We could party like a rockstar, nonstop." The call is terrible, of course. 50 raps in his "I Want Love" voice over a pillowy R&B beat, something he's done over and over again since "21 Questions." When 50 centers a whole song around dissing someone, he tends to at least make certain that the song sounds hard and bombastic. With this one, it's like he didn't intend to do it and he couldn't help himself. And of form he went for the gay thing. Wayne and Child have, after all, been photographed kissing each other, and that's been more than adequate to put Wayne at the essence of rap's gay panic. It's form of rum that 50 doesn't go any deeper with his fire than a typical Nah Right commenter.
50 is doing this to beat up attention, and it's working; I'm sitting here writing an introduction about it, after all. It might lead nowhere. A short while ago, 50 called Wayne a prostitute for jumping on absolutely anyone's song, but I take a difficult time believing that Wayne would actually be insulted by that. (Wayne on "'S' on my Chest," from the DJ Khaled album: "I'm a whore / You recognize that I'm a whore.") And Wayne's never really engaged much in beef. When Gillie Da Kid launched a huge campaign against Wayne last year, Wayne mostly ignored him. And Wayne's long had a contentious relationship with his former Cash Money labelmates, but for every song he's done bashing Juvenile or B.G. he's done another about how poorly he misses the early Hot Boys and how he still loves them. Wayne is like Cam'ron; his title is too stoned and free-associative and home to actually act in the setting of a dis track. 50, meanwhile, is subject to play playground bully, pointing and laughing rather than actually engaging his opponents. And "Part Time Lover" feels like the intersection of frustration. 50 was mad at being put down so low on MTV's hottest-MCs list, so he took aim at the guy on top. And I don't believe it's a conjunction that 50 put this song out but a few years after Wayne leaked his first course with Kanye, 50's release-date rival. 50 hasn't come straight out and attacked Kanye; he's even, as Elliott Wilson reported today, appearing alongside Kanye on the back of Rolling Stone. But 50's being sneaky about it, taking digs at the masses around Kanye, baiting him and hoping for a blowup. I'd love to see Wayne come back blasting and just eviscerate 50, but it's probably not going to happen. Instead, this will most likely be only one more stop on 50's long journey toward obsolescence. I marvel how long it'll hold him to fire every other rapper on that hottest-MCs list.
Voice review: Greg Tate on 50 Cent's The MassacreVoice review: Kris Ex on 50 Cent's Get Fat or Die Tryin'
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