Scene one: Wednesday afternoon, September 12. 50 Cent is hosting Rap City, grinning huge at the camera. He's in good spirits, which leads me to think that he taped the exhibit a few days before it aired. "It's September 12, which means it's the day afterwards I went platinum!" Lloyd Banks, Tony Yayo, Whoo Kid, Havoc, and Prodigy shuffle around quietly in the background, playing pool and laughing at 50's jokes.
Young Buck is less quiet; he keeps screaming "We the best!" over and over, making fun of DJ Khaled. 50 calmly agrees: "We are, Buck." 50 plays the "Can't Tell Me Nothing" video and praises Hype Williams. Then he brings in Soulja Boy, interviews the 17-year-old kid, tries to be nice even though he's obviously bored. Soulja Boy is tiny compared to 50. He sits adjacent to 50 almost cringing, painfully nervous, mumbling stuff about his record label and his clothing line. When they get back from commercial, 50 says he's here with Soulja Boy and Soulja Boy sheepishly says "yooo!," almost whispers it. 50 seems to be having fun intimidating Soulja Boy. He gets Soulja Boy to bear up and do his dance. Then he says he's going to try it. "I'ma thug it out, though, because they love who I am." 50 crosses his legs and slaps the support of his foot, the two parts of the Soulja Boy dance that any able-bodied person can do. Then he crosses his arms, scowls at the camera, and nods his head, refusing to terminate the dance, clowning the fuck out of the kid. The G-Unit guys laugh like wolves in the background. Later, Jim Jones shows up to make strategic alliances and distance himself from Cam'ron. Jones says he has a new label deal pending that he doesn't wish to announce yet. He also says that he has his money on 50 in the sales-battle. During the final fadeout, Young Buck slightly switches up his routine: "You can't tell me nothing, Kanye! We the best, Kanye!"
Scene two: Tuesday evening, 50's getting set to do a point in Springfield, Massachusetts. He's disembarking his private plane with the remainder of G-Unit behind him, and a local TV news reporter shows up to question him. Someone must've already told 50 that Kanye West is on pace to outsell him by a fairly wide margin. He looks tired and gaunt and disappointed. The news reporter asks him a span of painfully obvious questions, and he wearily runs through his usual talking points. Then he veers off-script. Responding to a query about how his new album is different from the former two, he starts venting about the expectations on him: "Between each project, there's a shade of a doubt cast over every artist. They don't ask if I have good music; they say, 'Do you think you can do it again?" when it may be unacceptable to do it again. Considering my first album sold 12 million records, my second album's about 9 million worldwide, right now with technology, it may be physically impossible for me to trade that many units. Then you consider an artist who hasn't had half the course record as me with the account of the sales. They put him there because his society is willing to pass the marketing dollars, and you take the world believing that he's actually my equal, as far as Kanye West is concerned." Weirdly, 50's outburst comes with no alteration in look or facial expression; he just keeps talking in the same flat monotone. The reporter, having no thought what to take of any of this, asks him whether there's any "brawl" (?) between him and Kanye or whether it's just marketing. 50: "Its marketing from their standpoint . When I've sold so many more records than he has, it's in their favor, if you can change the public's view of it."The reporter, desperately searching for a softball question, asks him to engage viewers through a day in the spirit of 50 Cent. 50 says that a typical day might involve doing promo, climbing on private jets, and so he breaks character again: "It seems exciting, but afterwards a while it's not exciting. I'm not very excited to go sell a record." He says he may never have another album, says that if he does make another album he won't go to elevate it. The reporter, finally catching on, asks if he's burned out. "Not burnt out," says 50. "I only look like I don't need to do it anymore." Most of this never makes it to air, but the entire unedited interview inevitably makes its way to YouTube.
50's right when he talks about how he was set up to suffer in the Kanye competition. By releasing his album on the same day as Kanye, 50 made the other guy the underdog, himself the villain. 50 was an underdog when he first came up, so it's difficult to see why he didn't see what was happening during the release-date buildup, how the story was writing itself. If projections prove correct, and they almost never do, Curtis will deal about 500,000 copies in its first week. That'll mean it's had the second-best opening weekend of any rap album this year, well behind Kanye and only forward of T.I. That's pretty good, especially during a sentence when scarcely any rapper can do to go gold. It's not well enough for 50, though. The competition might've all been a big marketing ploy, the sales from both Curtis and Graduation might go to gain the same group of investors, but 50 wanted to win, and he doesn't seem able to process the thought that he's losing. It's not fun to watch. 50 Cent is a good rapper; in Get Fat or Die Tryin', he had a debut album I liked better than College Dropout. But the robotic bulletproof superhero persona he's developed just isn't interesting, and it doesn't work for a whole lot of particularly good music. It would be an oversimplification to say that Graduation succeeds where Curtis fails because Kanye allows himself to feel like a man being rather than a Terminator, but it's surely a portion of the album's success. 50 can even draw a titanic anthem out of his inhuman swagger every so often, and I'll have "I Get Money" over any single track on Graduation. But it's not sustainable. Last night, 50 did a point at Hammerstein Ballroom, and Jim Jones and Juelz Santana came out to connect him. On Rap City, 50 and Jones played with the rumour that Jones was signing with G-Unit. If it actually happens, maybe those guys can help 50 relearn how to meet the scrappy street-level underdog. Probably not, but maybe.
Yesterday, a new non-album 50 Cent song called "Smile" leaked. I don't recognize how long ago 50 recorded the song, but on it he vents the same frustration he showed in that Springfield TV audience and in the interview he gave Hot 97 on the dawning of September 12. "My next album might be my last," he singsongs on the hook. The 1st verse tells of industry people telling him to calm down: "I think I'm outta control / My mind, body, and soul / Tell me I'm being pimped / And it's making me sick / You know Em made that company ended a million dollars / And when he ain't around they saying foul shit about him." Later, he bitches about how Oprah will speak to Kanye (who, if what I've read online is true, produced the track) but not to him. And then: "Met Al Gore and his wife in them first-class seats / She said she didn't like rap until she met me / You gotta understand, I'm a charming young man / A whole lot has been changed since I went hand-to-hand." I don't for a moment trust that story, but I know the audacity. Rap has never had a greater public enemy than Tipper Gore, and here 50 is saying that he changed her head on charm alone. And that's the real triumphant story behind 50 Cent: the thought that person made it out of hellish circumstances, life-threatening injuries, and industry bullshit, becoming the world's biggest star just on the effect of his own natural charisma and news and craft. But when he isolates himself and stops allowing us to see him as a human, that history loses its magic, and he eventually ceases to be the world's biggest star. On the outro, he rants further: "You should be happy, you live? I merely require you to be happy. Smile for me. If I gotta go out to get you feeling better, I'll go away." All of a sudden, he sounds more like a soul than he has in a pair of years. And if he allows himself to stay human this time, he might pull himself back up to where he once was. Voice review: Greg Tate on 50 Cent's CurtisVoice 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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