Man, 50 Cent is funny. If he didn't exist, someone would have to invent him. He's literally like some sort of rap supervillain; he acts like he's utterly determined to embody
all of the worst impulses in hip-hop. Even the worst impulses that contradict the other worst impulses.
The reason I bring this up is because 50 recently said some stuff on the radio (he drops interviews the way other MCs drop freestyles) that tallies with some of the stuff I started tangentially rambling about in my recent
post on Chipmunk. Specifically, the equation of melody with
weakness.
Ron Mexico over at XXL has blogged about this
here. 50 starts out by identifying the equation of melody with weakness as an unfair prejudice held by hip-hop fans:
“They want the hard music from me. They want what I fell in love with from KRS-One and Criminal Minded… And, I understand it because what they would say is wrong with a 50 Cent record is what they enjoy from Drake... When he’s singing on his choruses nobody has an issue because he doesn’t come from a tough background.”
When it's pointed out to 50 that, many moons ago, he attacked Ja Rule for making melodic songs, he clarifies:
“[Ja Rule] was actually trying to hit notes. Like, going away from just using the monotone singing bass in your speaking voice.”
Ron Mexico offers the following commentary:
"50 Cent issues a formal excuse for why his girly gangsta sing-alongs are more acceptable than Ja Rule’s. Apparently Rule tried a little too hard to be a real singer, which, as you remember, wasn’t gangsta enough. In 50’s mind, Ja Rule’s attempts to hit notes made his music fraudulent and unworthy for public consumption. 50 believes that he never left the confines of what he calls 'monotone singing'. I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, but I am assuming he’s implying that he stays within a certain gangsta-safe octave."
So, yeah, pretty funny. This prompted a couple of thoughts. First of all, I think singing is connected with
emotional disinhibition. Emotional disinhibition is problematic for hip-hop's tough-guy masculinity because it makes one vulnerable. (Jay Smooth is
brilliant on this.) It's more acceptable for rappers to display emotions like anger than it is for them to display 'softer' emotions which might betray emotional weakness, and it's these latter sort of emotions which singing is generally held to express. Hence Chuck D, in 1988, raging "you singers are spineless/as you sing your senseless songs to the mindless/your general subject, love, is minimal". Hence Eminem, in 2002, opting to
sing, rather than rap, the first genuinely happy he song he'd ever recorded since becoming Slim Shady - 'Hailie's Song', about how much he loves his daughter. (He even introduces the song by saying, "I can't sing, but I feel like singing; I want to fuckin' sing, 'cause I'm happy".) Hence 50 Cent's contrast between himself and Drake; it's okay for Drake to sing (the thought goes) because he doesn't come from a
tough background, and if you genuinely come from a tough background, you have your guard up all the time, and don't - as a matter of survival - go around displaying weakness. You're supposed to be
emotionally inhibited. (Remember Mobb Deep's chilling, straightfaced dedication of their greatest moment, 1995's 'Shook Ones Part II', to "real niggas who ain't got no feelings"? 50 Cent
loves Mobb Deep. He signed them to G-Unit.) Hence, even, 50's apparently ridiculous contrast between himself and Ja Rule; 50 sings in the acceptable 'gangsta-safe octave' because his singing, so he claims, never wavers from the 'bass' of his speaking voice: i.e., he sings like he's still got his emotional guard up.
...all of which puts a slightly different spin on the stuff I was going on about in that Chipmunk post. Singing, maybe, comes across as evidence that someone hasn't really internalised all the proper stifling, inhibiting codes of working class masculinity; and so it
might seem like a flag denoting a lack of authenticity in someone who claims to come from what 50 Cent calls a 'tough background'. Which is, maybe, why it's okay for Jay-Z to get hooks from Rihanna and Alicia Keys, while boasting "my raps don't have melodies" on 'D.O.A. (Death Of Autotune)'. It's okay for
them to have melodies. Maybe Drake is allowed to sing, too. Not Jay-Z, though.
(I feel like maybe I haven't made clear enough that I think all of the above is absolutely ridiculous, fucked up, and wrong. Obviously I do. I'm just interested in teasing out the structure of these ways of thinking.)
.....
Secondly.... 50 Cent, generally. His plight comes from the fact that, as I say, he's trying to navigate two different sets of values that have come into conflict with each other. On the one hand, he's internalised the stereotype of the rapper-as-hustler pursuing wealth - and power - at all costs. This is the guy who released
two albums called
Get Rich Or Die Tryin', not to mention one called
Power Of The Dollar. Oh, and there was 'I Get Money'. Now, this means being a
pop rapper, who makes catchy, radio friendly songs with R&B singers on the hooks. On the other hand, he's equally supposed to embody the equally powerful stereotype of the rapper as a hard man, a 'gangster' from the 'streets', who identifies himself with 'street' values. This means, a la MC Ren on 'Final Frontier', pouring scorn upon pop rappers who make catchy, radio-friendly songs with R&B singers on the hook - those guys are inauthentic, fakers. That's why 50 was both making pop songs
and having a go at Ja Rule for making pop songs.
When 50 first shot to prominence in 2003, it was in part because he managed to pull off the almost-impossible trick of appearing to do
both of these things. You can have your pop songs, and you can have your 'authentic' street/thug credibility too. This have-your-cake-and-eat-it model had been lived out already by rap's great twin martyrs, 2Pac and the Notorious B.I.G. But both of those men had portrayed themselves as self-destructive and self-hating; each was obviously and explicitly a walking nest of contradictions. Listening to the work of either, you sense that a violent, untimely demise seems like the only possible outcome.
50's not like that; he's too smooth, too calculated, and has nothing of the rough, intuitive unpredictability of his doomed predecessors. He's also still alive. So the contradictions that he embodied from the start have long since caught up with him, to the point that he looks increasingly ridiculous, a walking joke driven to absurdities like the ones quoted above to try to make sense of his own behaviour.
