50 Cent

Few musicians as successful as rap legend 50 Cent have ever been less innovative. Indeed, 50 has gained enormous and well-deserved fame by creating the archetypal song for many of hip-hop’s most fundamental clichés—in his 2003 masterpiece “Get Rich or Die Tryin’” alone, 50 brought the dance floor bump-n-grind to its apotheosis with “In Da Club,” painted the precise portrait of one of rap’s cardinal tropes with “P.I.M.P.,” and refined hip-hop’s coarse, lascivious love ballad with “21 Questions.” These songs are just part of a larger collection of singles that have formed 50’s success by imprinting combinations of catchy, uncomplicated hooks and evenly-paced, slick, alternatively gritty and playful beats onto rap’s collective consciousness.

50’s newest album, “Before I Self Destruct,” reveals the shortcomings of this formula. As before, the album is limited to the rap’s essential subjects: self-promotion, industry feuding, and street cred. This newest release also resembles 50’s past success in its stellar production and moments of great lyrical intensity. But “Before I Self Destruct” is limited by its combination of forgettable hooks, tired themes and unfocused narratives.

Nonetheless, 50 does make an effort at trying something new. The album’s lead single, “Baby by Me,” is a nod at the new synth-laden, auto-tuned electronic-rap that currently is dominating the hip-hop charts. A fast-talking Fiddy avoids subtlety, giddily rapping “Have a baby by me, baby! Be a millionaire” and “you can feel every inch of it when we intimate / I’ll use my tongue baby, I’ll leave you sprung baby.” R&B star Ne-Yo contributes to the blithe fun in the song’s hook, explaining in his most sincere croon, “bet I’ll have you gone,” and, with a quick-paced, commanding tone, and repeatedly implores, “come see what I mean.” Despite a lack of originality, the song’s bubbly pop sound and frivolous air make it radio-ready and a virtually guaranteed hit on the dance floor.

Some of 50’s more traditional songs are also strong, and a few even grasp at the greatness of his earlier work. “Psycho,” the newest installment in a series of Eminem-50 Cent duets that have appeared on each of 50’s albums, is one of the best songs the two MC’s have made together. One of three Dr. Dre-produced songs on the album, “Psycho” has a slow-moving and tense beat that is punctuated by a sweeping, dramatic string sample. 50 returns to his most successful gangsta style in lines like, “it’s murder when they found the gun now they doing ballistics / but they can’t find a fingerprint this shit’s going terrific.”

But Eminem surpasses this already fine performance, exhibiting his wide creative range and superior rhyming ability. Combining a series of pop-culture figures that includes the Octomom, Dakota Fanning, Christopher Reeves, and Portia de Rossi into a shocking and fantastic narrative, Shady explains “I’m as ill as can be / my appeal is to serial killers, what a pill is to me / killing so villainously / still as maniacal on the Nyquil and psycho as Michael Myers.” The connection between Eminem’s thoughts on B-list celebrities and 50’s threats of murder, however, is barely logical. Indeed, like most of “Before I Self Destruct,” “Psycho” is a song that is as violent as it is vague.

“Crime Wave,” “Death to My Enemies,” and “Stretch” all follow this bland, angry model of songs about death and drugs. Lines that share rhymes, images, and cadences begin to appear throughout these songs, as in “Crime Wave” and “Stretch” when 50 respectively says “Pistol pop, dime for dime, burn baby burn” and “Gun pop! One shot! Body drop, it wasn’t me!” All three of these songs concern 50’s recklessness, violence, and drug history, and end up cheapening some of the better songs on the album by creating a sense of tedium.

The most significant failures on “Before I Self Destruct” are in the loss of the simple, catchy hooks that played a crucial role in vaulting 50 to his present position in hip-hop. Particularly poor showings can be seen in “Then Days Went By,” when 50 rhymes “rich,” “shit,” “hit,” and “shit,” or in that of “Could’ve Been You,” when R. Kelly explains to a potential mate that, “The reason you didn’t get picked / because you got your nose up your ass / You smelling your shit / but tonight you met your match / I’m smelling my shit too now how you like that.” R. Kelly’s humor is infantile without being fun and contrasts terribly with the rest of “Could’ve Been You,” an unforgiving song about lost love.

“Before I Self Destruct” feels like 50 Cent’s attempt to reassert his street roots and to assure listeners that, despite being a musical and corporate icon, Fiddy has not grown soft. In the trash talking, self-promotion, and muscle flexing that ensues, 50 provides for entertainment, if not intrigue. This basic enjoyment, however, runs shallow: having come to define many of rap’s most important symbols, 50 Cent has started to run in place.