by John Bear
Daily Lobo
50 Cent, in a career move usually reserved for aging classic rockers, has reissued The Massacre.
The new and improved version comes with a DVD featuring music videos for every track - and that's about it. It's the exact same thing, but $17 more.
But therein lies the genius of it all. It's so American.
People like 50 Cent so often bead the eyes and cock the eyebrows of people looking for the next celebrity to blame for the generally unpleasant disposition of America's youth.
It would be easy to launch into a tirade about how an artist such as 50 Cent should be ashamed for portraying the African-American community in such a negative light.
But such an indictment would be the product of faulty logic. A tendency exists to equate African-American entertainers with the African-American community.
This mode of thinking is wrong. The violent, misogynist rambling of 50 Cent, or any other gangster rapper for that matter, does not represent the African-American community, nor does he owe anything to it.
Besides, if 50 Cent is the mouthpiece for any group of people, it's not African-Americans, but all Americans in general. He is, after all, here for the money.
A flag-waving, apple-pie-eating capitalist pig mentality presents itself in this album in several ways.
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First, it is a reissue of an album not even a year old. This is just a lazy way to sucker consumers out of more money for what is, a few perfunctory alterations aside, the exact same product. Very American.
Second, the 20 songs on the album address a wide spectrum of topics, everything from robbing adversaries at gunpoint to the inherent worthlessness of hos. 50 creates a fictional world with virtues that include getting what you want, utilizing force if necessary. Guns are good and it is your civic duty to own one, preferably of large caliber. Women are hos, unless they happen to be your mom. As the album drones on, he sounds less like a street-hardened criminal and more like a card-carrying member of the radical right. The ideas are all the same, the delivery just more openly brutal.
Third, the videos on the DVD reveal 50's overwhelming penchant for big vehicles that get bad gas mileage. All Americans, not just right-wingers, love giant vehicles.
If you bought the first version of The Massacre, buy the new one. This album is the soundtrack for America: guns, violence, poor fuel economy, hatred of females, the inability to articulate oneself. It has it all. Slapping down more money for more of the same is your patriotic duty. One can sit and listen to it with an undeniable sense of däj† vu coupled with the lump that forms in the throat when someone knows he or she has done something for the good of the country.
