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.