Spot on review from
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/reviews/ ... 77,00.html
Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson's sixth album was heralded not by an extensive media campaign - pleading itchiness about internet piracy, his label sent The Massacre to journalists after the album's release date - but a hail of gunfire. The more waspish observer might suggest that, in Jackson's case, the two amount to the same thing. You would certainly be hard pushed to find another gangsta rapper who has traded so heavily on violence, who has turned a propensity for getting himself stabbed or shot - as a result of provoking pointless arguments with other rappers - into a career.
And what a career. Jackson's last album, Get Rich or Die Tryin', sold 11 million copies. Piggy Bank, its follow-up's key track, notes correctly that his achievements did not end there. Not even Eminem can interest the public in his Detroit "posse", D12, but - as Piggy Bank puts it with phrasing you could consider either deeply unfortunate or disarmingly honest - Jackson can currently make even his friends' "shit sell". Those friends included the Game, Young Buck and Lloyd Banks, whose name raises the hope that future 50 Cent proteges will be called things like Bark Layz, First Die Wrecked and Halle Faxx.
The hail of gunfire that preceded this album came outside New York radio station Hot 97 last month. Inside, Jackson was broadcasting another squabble, oddly with one of the chums whose success Piggy Bank lauds. In fact, Piggy Bank was the problem. When not gloating about the marketability of Jackson's ordure, the track picks fights with rappers including Fat Joe, Nas, Shyne and Jadakiss, who he claims have been sending him subliminal messages in their lyrics. The Game declined to back Jackson up, thus adding himself to a shitlist that by now must resemble the manuscript of a 19th-century Russian novel. Whether the Game was party to the Hot 97 violence is currently unknown. Either way, it provided good publicity for The Massacre, as 24-year-old Kevin Reed, who was shot in the leg, will doubtless be delighted to learn.
Then again, if he has heard The Massacre, Reed might well be furious: I took a bullet for this twaddle? While the album demonstrates Jackson's talent for causing trouble, it also takes a highlighter pen to his shortcomings, not all of which were previously apparent. Get Rich or Die Tryin' featured various thrilling Dr Dre productions. Here, however, the production is handled by lesser talents, proffering wan-sounding imitations of the Neptunes' sparse, breathy funk on Candy Shop, Timbaland's oriental motifs on Disco Inferno, and even Dre's old 1970s-soul-influenced "g-funk" on Ski Mask Way.
With nothing musically fresh, attention is focused on Jackson himself. Bad idea. When Eminem makes a guest appearance on Gatman and Robbin', you cringe on Jackson's behalf, so marked is the difference between his halting, monotonal mumble and his mentor's deft, livewire voice.
Jackson is no big shakes as a rapper, but as a lyricist he's a disaster. He can't do metaphors - at one juncture he claims to have the dancefloor "hot as a tea kettle" - and his idea of humour involves referring to fellatio as "licking the lollipop". He can't even insult people properly. For all the controversy, Piggy Bank's slurs are witless. He calls Fat Joe fat, which, given that he already calls himself fat, seems unlikely to sting the very core of his being. Fat Joe himself is hardly among hip-hop's rapier wits - his wildly varied oeuvre includes Shit Is Real, Dat Gangsta Shit, We Run This Shit and Shit Is Real Part 2 - but even he managed a better put down in response: "Them steroids is getting to him." Looking at The Massacre's unwittingly homoerotic cover - Jackson stripped to the waist, pectorals like barrage balloons - you can see his point.
The album is devoid of any of the factors that make the best gangsta rap disturbingly compelling: the nihilistic self-loathing of the Geto Boys, Snoop Dogg's sly humour, NWA's social anger. There's nothing except a string of cliches so limited that repetition is unavoidable, as evidenced by the opening trio of tracks. In My Hood, on which he threatens to beat someone's girlfriend up, is followed by This Is 50, on which he boasts about his arsenal of "clips" and "hollow tips"; this precedes I'm Supposed to Die Tonight, on which he throws caution to the wind and threatens to beat someone's girlfriend up, then boasts about his arsenal of "clips" and "hollow tips".
The Massacre sounds like the work of someone for whom music is merely a sideline, a distraction from the serious business of perpetuating a violent, ghoulish side-show. Depressingly, you suspect 50 Cent knows exactly what his audience wants. By Alexis Petridis
