The Massacre

04/01/2005 7:00 PM, LAUNCH
Dan Leroy

Safe, sound and thoroughly market-tested, the follow-up to 50 Cent’s multi-platinum breakthrough, Get Rich Or Die Tryin’, fulfills just about every goal expected of a sequel. Is that enough to keep 50 and the G-Unit followers riding his coattails atop the hip-hop world they’ve dominated for the past two years? Yes–at least for the short term.

You can ignore the token effort at artistic credibility, “A Baltimore Love Thing,” which casts 50 in the role of heroin itself, rhyming to an errant female lover/junkie. It’s the kind of critical sop one can easily afford on an album of 20-odd tracks; that it has no company says much more about 50’s growth. The real issue here is simply: how good a copy of Get Rich did he and his collaborators make? Answer: a pretty good one. Despite the relative absence of Dr. Dre (who only produced two tracks, including the standout “Outta Control,” with its surging organ hook) and the surprising ineffectiveness of Eminem, the disc is still in good hands with the likes of Scott Storch and Hi-Tek, whose mellow contributions make a nice fit for 50’s ominously calm voice.

As for 50, he remains a limited MC capable of deceptive finesse: his underrated hook singing is one of the best parts of the album, carrying lesser tracks such as “God Gave Me Style,” and he makes each small variation, like the drawled choruses of “This Is 50,” count for a lot. His weakness is one that afflicts most of his hip-hop peers: the gun-toting tales of retribution still arrive without any larger context. Aside from his skewering of Fat Joe, Nas and Jadakiss on the wickedly funny “Piggy Bank” and the odd biographical note (“My ma would turn in her grave if I ever married a white chick”), these could be anyone’s rhymes. That certainly won’t prevent The Massacre, a very sound business decision, from moving multiple millions of units; only fans who want more than the cartoon Rambo on the cover will be disappointed.