Hip Hop Happenings - Canadian Review of 50 Cent Performance

You wanna know the problem with 50 Cent?

Forget the bullet wounds, the bling, the bitches. Forget the NRA-worthy fetishization of firearms. Forget the dubious influence on our Impressionable Youth. Forget the man's unfortunate decision to conquer Hollywood.

The problem with 50 Cent is this: He's freakin' huge without being much of a rapper.

Make no mistake, the cat's got some hot tracks and one of the most enviable "gangsta" personas ever to seduce Whitby. But 50's final, pre-encore shout-outs to cunning entrepreneurs � and clearly talented MCs � Slim Shady (Eminem for you parents) and Dr. Dre at Ricoh Coliseum last night said it all: without you, I'm nothing.

Not to take anything away from the success of the man known to his mother as Curtis Jackson. In the grand tradition of parent-rattling that extends from Elvis and the Beatles to Alice Cooper to Ozzy to Marilyn Manson and Slipknot, 50 is that rare popsters capable of offending delicate sensibilities all the way up to elected office-holders.

Thanks to Liberal MP Dan McTeague's sloganeering crusade to keep the rapper out of Canada and the unfortunate parking-lot shooting that coincided with 50 Cent's last Toronto show, at the Molson Amphitheatre in 2003, last night's show was presided over by sufficient numbers of the local constabulary to remind one of the War Measures Act.

Best quote of the night goes to the guy dodging cruisers and Court Services vans in the lot after the show: "Dude, we're not gonna get shot. We're gonna get hit by a cop car."

The gunshot samples perforating 50's brisk set � conducted minus several members of his G-Unit posse apparently stopped at the border � may have put the cops on edge, but otherwise there was never enough energy emanating from the stage to suggest a riot might break out.

Preceded by a trailer for 50 Cent's Get Rich or Die Tryin' and a brief mini-doc on his rise to glory, the program was a hasty, perfunctorily rhymed whistle-stop tour through the "Fiddy" oeuvre. The folks on the floor dug satisfying hits like "P.I.M.P.," "What Up Gangsta," "In Da Club," "Candy Shop" and "Disco Inferno," but the show never really took off. Blame the diminished G-Unit crew for the dampened spark, or concede that 50 Cent's monotone drawl ain't that galvanizing over the long haul. Either way, it wasn't special enough to justify the headlines.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Render&c=Page&cid=968867495754&ce=Columnist&colid=974814654337 - Additional articles by Ben Rayner