The Fall of 50 Cent
Well you may not know I am a huge
50 Cent fan. I am writing this to share my thoughts on how this great rapper
Rose to the top and then fell. I am going to be brutally honest here as to what
I think is going on with 50 Cent.
First let’s talk about the rise of
Curtis Jackson. I’m not going to get into all the details, im not Wikipedia.
Instead I will tell you from my point of view. 50 seemed to come out of nowhere
with his big hit “Wanksta” in 2002. He also had a really nice track called “Places
to Go” off the 8mile soundtrack. Sounds formulatic as to how a rapper gets
popular right? Well you can’t really mention 50 without mentioning how he gets most
of his attention; Starting BEEF.
As 50 Cent rose, NY rival Ja Rule
went to becoming very unpopular in 2003. It got so bad that Ja Rule released a
bitter album(That I believe helped seal his career’s fate) Ja would make a
comeback album in 2004 called R.U.L.E. but this is about 50 not Ja. 50’s Get Rich or Die Tryin is one of my
favorite rap albums ever. After its released he was almost hailed as the next
Biggie Smalls(A bold assumption), but not hard to understand.
Afterwards 50 continued to have
success with G-Unit. Not only was he successful but so was the rest of the
unit. Lloyd Banks, Young Buck, and The Game in particular had success. In 2005
50 released The Massacre. I really liked the Massacre. 50 was still fierce as
ever, but it felt like he wasn’t as hungry and was just trying to please all
his fans. 50 was an executive producer for The Game, who had, in my opinion the
best rap album of 2005.(Hmm what about Kanye?) Anyways I think this would start
the beef between 50 and The Game.
After defeating
Ja Rule easily, 50 would then go after
Fat Joe, Jadakiss, and even Nas. I could
understand going after Jadakiss and Fat Joe, since they are friends of Ja Rule.
Those two were much better rappers but 50 seemed to “End Competition” like he
said he would after 2005. However with Nas I felt 50 was completely out of his
league.
50 Cent was
still fairly popular by 2007 but he was about to make another mistake. His 3rd
album, originally titled “Before I Self Destruct” was changed to “Curtis” due
to Cam’ron(another NY rapper) dissing him. This album was to be released the
same day as Kanye West’s Graduation album. Well hell I bought both…but Kanye’s
was far superior. 50 declared he would quit if Kanye outsold him. Afterwards 50
backed down from that statement.
“Curtis” was
good, but not great. I think 50 had completely lost his hunger at this point. He
made another mistake at going at another rapper who had became popular at the
time, Rick Ross. This beef was not as vicious as previous beefs but I think it
made 50 even more unpopular. “Before I Self Destruct” came out in 2009. It was
an improvement over “Curtis” but honestly I didn’t feel it was all that. The
album did not sell well either. I don’t even think it sold 200,000 records in
its first week. 50’s older albums sold well over 500,000 copies. In fact “The
Massacre” went platinum in one week.
In conclusion, I
still like 50. He is a great businessman but you really have to wonder at this
point will “Street King Immortal” be a good album? If not 50 is done. He had a
hell of a run, I mean most rappers don’t make 2-3 succesful albums or hang
around for about a decade. Only time will tell.
