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Straight Outta Compton (Priority, 1988)
/
Ghetto
Music: The Blueprint Of Hip Hop (Jive, 1989) /
Get Rich Or Die Tryin’
– Soundtrack (2005)
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50 Cent CDs
Get Rich Or Die Tryin'
/
The Massacre /
Guess Who's Back /
Power of the Dollar
* * * * * Books on Rap &
Hip Hop
Todd Boyd,
The
New H.N.I.C.: The Death of Civil Rights and the Reign of Hip Hop
(2003) /
Sharif Responds to Todd
Boyd /
Is Hip
Hop Really Dead?
Brian Cross,
It's Not About a Salary... Rap, Race and Resistance in Los
Angeles: Rap, Race, and Resistance in Los Angeles (1993)
Tricia Rose,
Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America
(1994)
Russell A. Porter, Spectacular
Vernaculars: Hip-Hop and the Politics of Postmodernism
(1995)
Bakari Kitwana,
The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the
Crisis in African American Culture
(2003)
Imani
Perry,
Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop (2004)
*
* * * * 50 Cent: A Metaphor for Change
By Intel
In the
eyes of Rap music superstar, 50 Cent, I see the sorrowful
exploitation of one of many countless faces marginalized in
ghettos across America. Born into a life cycle of poverty,
uncertainty, hunger and misery, and educated in substandard
institutions, a myopic, even selfish and self-destructive,
survival-of-the-fittest mentality dominates. What then would you
expect from someone who lives day to day wearing a bullet-proof
vest, cynically anticipating death with a smile?
Adverse to its initial call for justice as a movement of social
consciousness, mainstream Rap music has come to embody the
promotion of a perpetual life cycle of discursive negativity.
Children deteriorate and die as a corporate machine without soul
capitalizes ruthlessly on the brutal and oppressive plague of
inner city poverty and pain. Recording industry star, 50 Cent,
validates the truth of this reality; sardonically boasting of a
childhood spent selling crack-cocaine, and nearly being shot to
death in front of his grandparents' house, only to bounce back a
more vicious hustler.
Elevated with grandeur to positions of leadership,
multi-platinum rap stars vow to
Get Rich Or Die Tryin',
as 50 Cent has demonstrated through his latest album's title,
which sold over 872,000 units in the first four days of its
February, 2002 release. The record industry cares not that they
are outright sponsors of the notion that crime pays. Children
coming from similar circumstances see this madness and continue
in the cycle in hopes of cashing out in the same way. Those on
the outside enjoy the entertainment.
Self-proclaimed industry kingpins like 50 Cent glamorize a
fictitious street life of prestige and glory through demented
songs with no honor. . . . Leading their people to self
destruction, the materialistic machine of shallow thought that
they ignorantly sell to the youth as success bears no fruit but
imprisonment and dysfunction, societal “problems [which are
often] veiled by being conveniently grouped by the automatic
attribution of criminal behavior to people of color,” as
Angela Davis, prison industrial-complex activist, ascertains.
Unfortunately, myopic thought abounds, and this crisis goes on
virtually unacknowledged while the multi-billion dollar
recording industry continues on in its exploitation of the
societal ills that plague inner-city communities nationwide.
Looking into the eyes of 50 Cent, I feel torn. I feel a sense of
brotherhood with this man, for, historically, he and I both
share a common and agonizing past in which our ancestors were
chattel, stolen from Africa, and brought to the West. Both our
families fled the persecution of the Deep South in the same way,
heading north in search of work and freedoms denied, only to be
banished into overcrowded inner city slums of poverty and crime.
As my brother's keeper, I can't help but love and pity 50 Cent.
I understand that he is a product of over 400 years of
conditioning, turmoil, and exploitation. Only time will show him
the truth of how he has poisoned his people, selling them the
Oppressor's deadly cocaine and lies.
With his undeniably innate appeal to masses of ghetto youth, I
know that 50 Cent has the potential to become a great
revolutionary and leader of men. However, given the crooked path
he walks today, he may not live to see tomorrow.
Thursday., December. 18, 2003
/
www.nuai.org
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update 1 July 2008 |
