50 Cent

50 Cent's The Massacre.

Related Content

• Holiday Gifts for Your Hip-Hop Cousin
  December 16, 2011
• Furious Styles Crew 18th Anniversary @ Yucca Tap Room
  November 17, 2011
• 6 Musicians With Surprising Political Affiliations
  November 8, 2011
• Ten Album Covers that Would Make Good Warning Labels on Cigarette Packs
  June 22, 2011
• Ellie Elmore, What Are You Listening To?
  September 30, 2011

More About

• 50 Cent
• Dr. Dre
• Teflon
• Hip-Hop and Rap
• Hardcore Rap

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Music Newsletter: Keep your thumb on the local music scene with music features, additional online music listings and show picks. We'll also send special ticket offers and music promotions available only to our Music Newsletter subscribers.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

With chiseled muscles drizzled in oil and an unspecified power that left him impervious to bullets, 50 Cent exploded onto the pop landscape like a Nietzsche-meets-Al-Capone Superman with a cadre of club-banging beats, itchy hooks and one-dimensional verses. For better andworse, The Massacrebreaks little new ground. There are the requisite sex-drenched club-bangers ("Candy Shop" and "Disco Inferno"), as well as the confessional yet oh-so-gully street ballads ("A Baltimore Love Thing"). And for someone who lists arrogance as a virtue, unsurprisingly, the former formula works better -- thanks in no small part to the viciously infectious funk of Dr. Dre. With a voice that resonates with the power and intensity of a volcano blast, 50 could probably continue to churn out these anthems to the oblivious masses well into the next decade. But for this millennium's Teflon don, the thematic and sonic redundancies he offers shortchange those who are still paying attention.