I'm Rising To The Top

We Say...

Review by Jayson Greene

50 Cent has gone to extravagant lengths to ensure that you, average hip-hop listener, utterly loathe him. He has picked meaningless fights with every second-tier rapper in New York City and, in doing so, has permanently lowered the bar for hip-hop battling; whereas it once meant spending hours honing the most devastating, contemptuous, career-ending screed you could muster (Jay-Z: "That's a one hot album every ten year average!" Nas: "You no moustache-havin, with whiskers like a rat…."), now it means you Photoshop an offensive album cover featuring your target and email a thirty-second rap you recorded that morning to Nahright. Thanks, 50. After releasing Get Rich or Die Tryin's 22-thousand track followup The Massacre, he signed every aging NY rap legend he could think of out of pure hubris, including M.O.P. and Mobb Deep. He then sat on M.O.P. for three years, denying their fans of any new music before dumping them and — even worse — made the authors of "Shook Ones, Pt. II" release the worst G-Unit album in history: a profound, depressing distinction.

In 2003, when 50 was unavoidable, these antics were compelling, in a way; it helped that he was receiving the last of Dr. Dre's great beats. But that was a pre-Kanye, Eminem-dominated era that felt a lot more hospitable to the idea to pop-music villains than the world does today; now, after two consecutive flops, he has the slightly pathetic air of a deposed dictator marinating in the failure he swore he would never accept. He seems to issue a song snippet every two months from his hidey-hole mansion in Connecticut that disappears the minute it pops up. Which makes this tape even more of a welcome surprise. Granted, it's not a total change of pace; it has all the requisite features of a 50 Cent mixtape, including long, ranting outros full of bizarre shoutouts to the B-list celebrities he's partying with these days ("I be hanging out with Val Kilmer and Sharon Stone and them, man!"), but there are two key differences: 1) He is rhyming exclusively over roller-rink disco-soul classics like "Ring My Bell" and "Don't Stop The Music," which he often lets ride out uninterrupted after he's done rhyming, and 2) He sounds like he is having enormous fun.

Granted, he's never gonna be the guy who ordered Missy to "put the hot dog down" as he stuck her for her jewels on "How To Rob" again, but here he recaptures some of the mischievous spirit that made his initial, 2002-era mixtape run so captivating as he spits boilerplate nonsense about how rich he is over these bubblegum-sticky tracks. "You a comic book, shorty, I'm in the Wall Street Journal," he crows on "Moon Man." He brags about hanging out with Bette Midler. He tells us about his "Benz so big, I can stand up and pee in it." If any of this is making you chuckle, than the tape is well worth your download. It's a reminder that this guy did get famous rapping for a reason, and now that his major-label career is essentially over (he may technically be "winning" his current, pathetic battle against Rick Ross, but there are about twelve people paying attention, and even they are bored) his Yosemite-Sam outbursts can be appreciated for the goofy good time they are.