Worried about 50 Cent

Right, but happening now & not in a book, and we all think we know the end already. That's what makes it uncomfortable.

(I #ed 'y' because I'm not sure if it's a vowel)

steve i think yr missing the point here

c'mon folks did you think biggie and 2pac deserved it just b/c of what/who they were mixed up in?

there is even a remote possibility of gunfire in the general vicinity of the stage => my son will not be joining me onstage no matter how he begs & pleads

I'm not gonna get all C. Dolores Tucker on your ass and say that gangsta rap causes crime/mysogyny, etc., and I'm not even willing to single out entertainers as being "role models" - but the fact of the matter is *everyone* is a role model, no matter who you are. People are social animals - they see how you behave and relate to it, they register what ideas you propagate. So if you think the world needs more thug-life, more eulogies to drug dealing, more romanticized versions of killing your own people, and that's what you propogate, that's the kind of environment you're going to find yourself in. And that's the kind of environment where someone will pay a rogue LA cop to shoot you after a party in Las Vegas. That's just the way it is - to say Biggie or Pac "deserved" it brings in notions of justice and punishment which I don't really subscribe to. But there is some causality at work here, to deny it is naive.

there is even a remote possibility of gunfire in the general vicinity of the stage => my son will not be joining me onstage no matter how he begs & pleads

I do have a son, and I ditto that 100 (per) Cent.

i also don't think mark's point in starting the thread was to valorize him

since when do you have to agree with someones "politics" in order to find their story/persona worthy of discussion?

(Please note that an answer of "positive" does not mean you think it's great for people to die.)

Still, he's a person, and I hate the idea of anyone getting shot, even celebrities.

Biggie & Tupac murders have had a negative effect for sure, b/c they're both martyrs & they make violence seem like an inevitible part of "the game." How might that have a positive spin?

You've posted now & I see one angle -- I think those murders probably did have some commercial effect, though that would be hard to parse.

Tupac & Biggie getting shot did nothing more than 1) turn the two of them into martyrs & afterlife cash-cows (as if they were chomping on wooden nickels pre-death) and 2) give unimaginative folks w/ a soapbox complex a convenient example to use when preaching about the horror & violence that hip-hop has wrought. Hip-hop & violence are as inexorably linked as you (or I) (or Bill O'Reilly) (or the rapper themselves, obviously) allow them to be - it's all about what angle of the story is played up (as Jess alludes to).

From what I can gather, there's rarely a distinction made between what's rapped about and what happens when the artist isn't rapping - I dunno if it's the "keep it real" ethos or some shit, but, by all appearances, they're one and the same, and that's part & parcel w/ the supposed dangerous allure of hip-hop that scares people AWAY (if that's even happening anymore) - more likely, it's this danger that inspires folks to offer thoughts on hip-hop's worthlessness, which'll spur the cycle that makes the enterprise seem edgy & cool & yadda yadda yadda.

And at the same time all of that bad stuff just creates a show that on certain levels attracts people to hip-hop -- it fascinates them, offers them drama, makes the records and the myths seem "real" -- and obviously the big pincer those two different impulses wield is exactly what we're talking about with 50 Cent or anyone else or hip-hop as a supposed whole. (When people say they like undie because "it's not about guns and hos" I sometimes think what they're really trying to say is "it's jumped out from between the pincers and evaded that issue," but then just evading the issue doesn't seem nearly as good as actually facing up to it.)

I think on some level we're expecting the happy ending that would come in a movie, but geez: we wanted it to be real, and in reality these things usually don't work out. And there's always some annoying prick around to say "I told you so," as if that tightrope walk that was probably going to end badly wasn't half of what we were fascinated by in the first place.

I think 2pac and biggie's deaths acted as a sort of wake-up call; like *something* was going to blow -- if not that, then somewhere else. given that it was these two key performers from dift. coasts with particular death-obsessions made it even more mythologically etc.etc. but things as far as I know were ramping up all around. It wasn't gangsta per se -- since that was earlier and since 2pac and biggie had both passed almost *out* of gangsta proper by the time of the shootings -- but it was just that with the new generation of rappers coming in with more real and more still extant ties to the ugly side of the streets then there needed to be a "yo, keep that shit out of music" smackdown sooner or later.

So naw, hip-hop blew up way before the shootings and it struggled afterwards coz it lost two of its most popular voices -- nothing good came of it.

All that aside, this'll sound callous, but my reaction when Tupac and Biggie died and the ensuing aftermath was, "Well, isn't this really what you expected and wanted?" In no way was I happy about it, of course, but it's like seeing someone break their ankle on Jackass -- it's just pushing things as far as they can go before it all goes to shit.

Finally: It certainly seems undisputable that the threats against 50 Cent are real, but I'm surprised no one has surmised that this is all a publicity stunt.

I hope he doesn't get shot. But to be honest, there are a lot of other people I'm more worried about getting shot right at the moment. 50's cartoon is nothing compared to the Looney Tunes on CNN.

the logic doesn't go 'biggie was killed' --> 'people praise biggie because he was killed' --> 'therefore he must not be as good as people say.'

it goes 'biggie was a genius' --> ('he got killed') --> 'who cares, he was a genius anyway.' that's it!

does his 'colourful' life translate into good records? anyone?

the idea of 'realness' (cf 'colourful life,' above) is pretty unassailable as a marketing concept in hip hop. there's nothing very new or interesting about the way 50 Cent is being sold to us, apart from maybe the speed with which we've all become interested in his story. actually scrub what i was going to say because jess said it all in the very first reply to this thread. d'oh.

I think that in order to answer this question, you have to define what constitues a "good" record, or a "good" performer within various levels of the hip hop community. Unfortunately, I think that chart hip hop, since its rise to popularity amongst suburbanite (mostly white) kids, has become as much as a dog and pony show for said kids as music in its own right. Just as Marilyn Manson and Korn, for instance, provide an outlet for disenchanted suburban youth, so too does music by guys like 50 Cent, Cam'Ron, and the Jigga.

As someone who really really enjoys hip hop and, especially appreciates a great hip hop dj (big up mtl!), I get frustrated with the way in which people I talk to (especially those who consider themselve to be major hip hop heads) focus on the lifestyle and personal history of major label hip hop artists. To me, it becomes almost like a modern day minstrel show--look at these black folks and what they do-I'll never have to live a life like that, but how much fun is it to gape at 50 Cent's actions and live vicariously through his music and the gossip about his life that I get from MTV and BET.

As Jay-Z intimates in "Da'Evils," the record labels feed you cash until "your shit starts to make sense" to the masses of record buying middle class suburbanites.

but isn't this the way some artists get presented in the media? focusing on the music isn't the only thing in the pop world is it?

what i'm asking: did anyone buy any of 50 cent's records and enjoy it. and did the focus on his life have something to do with its enjoyment (if ans is yes).

If it means anything, I've heard the album, I think it's decent, but I'm not the kind of hip hop fan that I outlined above, so I don't really think the focus on his life was particularly exciting. It seemed like more of the same.

Also, I don't think the album stands up to repeated plays...it gets real tired real fast.

why should all hip hop have to face up to one element of its culture?
im sure a lot of backpackers don't want to talk about violence and 40s and blunts,but it always seems to be implied that this is almost some failing on their part...
jut one example,but there seems to be a tacit assumption here that it is impossible for someone to object to rap on these grounds,anyone who does around here is instantly criticised as if their concerns are stupid,as if they aren't "real" enough if they don't want to hear about guns and hos
which is a bit rich,considering that the social position of most of us is surely well above the people "keeping it real" for our entertainment
i mean,i think commercial hip hop is,in general,a lot better than most undie/backpacker stuff,as it happens,but any other view point seems to be seen as illegitimate
its almost a macho attitude,if you don't want to hear about guns and pussy its just that you don't have the balls

(as for 50's music, I loooooove "Wanksta," bored by "In Da Club")

anticon don't talk about guns and hos because they don't know guns and hos yet they abhor those who do rap about guns and hos cuz that's what they know. how many times have you heard a mainstream mc diss a backpacker cuz he raps about listening to rakim on a mountain top?

i don think that mainstream hiphop is in general better,i just don't think that ilm ever really addresses why other hiphop is inherently bad,like upthread when nabisco implies that hiphop should have to "face up to" guns and hos,and if it doesn't it is just pussying out,as if the idea that one doesn't want to rap about guns and hos is stupid

Oh, i don't think those who "rap about guns and hos" are of such limited experience that that's all they could rap about, nor do I accept the proposition that one can only write about what one knows. That Li'l Flip song where he rapped about what was actually going on in his life (the process of going to record company meetings and being bored by talk that didn't interest him while still having to remain engaged with the whole process) was more "real" than a thousand talez of gun battlez etc.

Look, whenever fans (and artists!) in a particular genre actively claim that they're there because of what it's not about, that tells us something important about the sway certain topics have in the field. Those topics -- and the fact that they have commercial appeal -- are the pincers I'm talking about. And undie as an overall project -- artists and fans both -- is technically not between them, but it's still haunted by them: it really frequently comes back to talking about not containing those topics, about not being commercial -- even about criticizing the artists who are all of those things. Maybe it's trying hard to forget all of that stuff, but it doesn't always succeed, especially among the fans. It's a subtext whether they want it or not.

And what this has meant, so far as I can see, is that good reactions to that subtext -- either ways of responding to it or ways of just getting past it entirely -- come from both sides of the aisle, commercial and undie alike. So my comment was not meant to suggest any of the stuff you're drawing out of it: just that undie fans occasionally posit the project of undie as a "solution" to this subtext, which I don't think it is. I don't think anyone is a pussy or anyone "has" to do anything.

In other words, I'm just saying a lot of "attempts to transcend this image" actually don't work the magic they're trying to: the issue keeps popping back into consciousness for the fans and even for some of the artists, at which point you sort of just want them to deal with it in a way that gets beyond "look, I have nothing to do with this." "Dealing with" does not mean enacting or buying into!

"underground"/ undie/ non-commercial doesn't only define itself by what it's not. certainly there were those within the community who were sickened by the stereotypes that certain mc's perpetuated. but i think that critics and fans offered it as more of a solution than the artist themselves did (anticon excepting). when i ask el-p last year what his favorite record was of the moment, he said the clipse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tzg2ZKkW-tA

lol wtf is he doin

thought the dude was shoveling snow for a fee a couple months ago

This just in...50 Cent carjacked and robbed for 2mil in cash.

http://trollcats.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/cat_driving_car_troll_animated_gif.gif

didn't know I could be this happy

lol

:D