(t5!) Heroes Of The Zeroes Singles: #25: 50 Cent – In Da Club (2003)

I’m sick and tired of 50 Cent. For the better part of the decade, we have to hear him feud with everyone from hip-hop, from Ja Rule to Jay-Z to Big Pun to The Game to Nas to the ghost of Biggie to The Lonely Island to the rapping granny from that Adam Sandler movie, etc. (and he unmistakably did it all to boost his own record sales). I’m sick and tired of his stories of how he got shot nine times and how his face can stop bullets. I’m sick and tired of middle age men using his name as a punch line when they’re making fun of hip-hop (“I’m Fiddy-Cent!!!”). I’m sick and tired of him doing cameos in Entourage as Turtle calls him by his first name, Curtis. I’m sick and tired of the G-Unit and the G-Unit Clothing Company. I’m sick and tired of his reality show. I’m sick and tired of him trying to tie himself into every product possible, including Magic Stick Condoms.

But there’s a reason why he got this ubiquitous. There was a span in 2003, when he first came out, when we weren’t sick and tired of him even if he was as everywhere as oxygen. His debut single “In Da Club” made radio history when it broke the Billboard record as the most listened-to song ever in only one week. We waited for the video on the music channels, we anticipated its appearance on weekly countdowns, we made requests to DJ’s in clubs. It was heard in blaring car stereos, in pizzerias, in the doctor’s clinic. 50 Cent was the hottest entity in pop culture and we didn’t mind one bit.

Part of the reason why we didn’t mind that it was so inescapable is because of that unremitting beat. Sure, it was powerful enough that “In Da Club” became one of the biggest club anthems of this decade, but it was terrific due to specifics: That one-note guitar riff that drills into our subconscious, the way the handclap is a fragment ahead of its time signature, the organs underneath the “my flow, my show, brought me the dough” bridge make it seem like the apocalypse is coming. The motivated strings are almost as cocky as 50 Cent is in this track, but as the saying goes, it ain’t cocky if you can back it up.

Of course, there’s 50. His showing in “In Da Club” may not be his best verses (that goes to his guest verse in The Game’s “Hate It Or Love It”) and may not even be his hardest (probably belongs to “I Get Money”), but if everything goes the right way, it’s these lyrics we will all remember him by. What he says should seem insignificant with a king-size Aftermath beat like this (even though he uttered memorable couplets like “I'm that cat by the bar toasting to the good life/You that faggot ass nigga trying to pull me back right?” and “Niggas heard I fuck with Dre, now they wanna show me love/When you sell like Eminem, and the hoes they wanna fuck”) but 50 is never been idolized for the words that he says. He may not be the cleverest wordsmith, or the most charming storyteller, but what he does have is that monotonous flow, that laid back attitude when he raps that hypnotizes his audience. Call him our decade’s Ma$e, but Ma$e never had a blockbuster single like this to get him over.

Back in university, I had the iconic “go shawty/it’s your birthday” intro saved in my cellphone. I had it programmed so that when my calendar prompts me of someone’s birthday, that’s the alarm that it plays. I was at a friend’s gathering once when the reminder went off, and an overambitious person who I’ve never met before asked me “you do know that The Beatles has a song “Birthday” right?”. Having listened to The White Album before, I confidently said “sure”. Then he continued, “so you’d rather have 50 Cent on your phone than The Beatles?” Now irritated, I answered “of course, because 50 Cent is now and The Beatles are fucking boring”. We never talked again.

50 Cent, for all his omnipresence, never seem to grow well with the times. The singles were never as colossal as his first one and the sales of his albums decreased as the decade continued. If we’re ever so fortunate, we never hear from 50 Cent in the next decade. Unless he comes up with another “In Da Club” to blow us away; we probably won’t be sick and tired of him then.