50 Cent
The Massacre
Aftermath, 2005
rating: 1/5

"Let [white people] talk! What are they saying that is different from what their grandfathers said? What are they doing or trying to do to us that their grandfathers didn't try to do to us? But what is different is what we are doing to ourselves."
- Bill Cosby at Jesse Jackson's 33rd Annual Rainbow/PUSH Coalition Conference

In keeping with the Aftermath method of releasing the same CD every month, here's the latest and samest from one of, if not the biggest cancer on society today. I realize it's taboo to judge a book by its cover, but face it, you can make a fairly educated guess from reading the jacket now, can't you? Continuing the stunning visual theme of 2003's ultra blockbusting capitalist circle jerk Get Rich Or Die Trying, The Massacre features 50 in almost the exact same shirtless pose, only this time, the bullet shattered glass has been replaced with bad artistic enhancements of his muscles sketched over his torso in pencil, making the cover the most comedic use of fake muscles since "Weird" Al's Rambo parody in UHF.

But, if you require further indisputable proof that this is shockingly awful, you can size up the disc easily from the 40 second intro. To set the scene, a Fiddy fan-girl manages to unwrap a CD or, as they call it in the biz, a unit. She then reads a generic message from the big goon himself saying it's a Valentine's gift to all his fans and puts it in her stereo, after which she is immediately blown away screaming into the hands of death, marking the album's first, among many, instances of meaningless, psychotically homicidal gunfire. Yeah, you really know someone is tough if they have a recording of what guns sound like. Ooh... so scary. Anyway, the first actual track "In My Hood" is surprisingly well produced by C. Styles and Bang Out, who mix live strings, a funky bassline, relatively atypical Aftermath keyboards, and a hard hitting beat to good effect... but the lyrics, oh gawd, the lyrics. They highlight right off the bat exactly how divorced from reality anyone has to be who would take anything 50 Cent says seriously. At the exact moment as he sings "where I come from it ain't safe to have more than a eighth/ Niggas'll come to ya' place, put a gun in ya' face" in his usual lethargic mumble, Rolling Stone was at work placing him at number 19 on their list of this year's biggest money-makers, raking in $24.9 million last year alone. There's no way he lives anywhere near anyone who can touch him anymore, unless he's both stupid and crazy, which the $6 million profit from his Reebok sneakers says otherwise. You know he took the money and ran far, far away. But this song also contains the wonderful line "It ain't good to do good in my hood/ (sound of a gun taking a human life) You know not to do good now." What kind of message is that? There's no point in trying to be a decent human being so you better kill everyone who is. I gotta say I don't follow his logic here. Perhaps, 50, if you stopped killing everyone who tries to do good in your hood, metaphorically or not, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad place to be from.. whaddaya think? This disk is so full of revolting lines like these, I could only listen to it for 10 minutes at a time to avoid throwing my Discman through the window and puking black ooze from my now tainted soul, the ooze to be then rinsed down the gutter by the tears of angels forced to witness my suffering as a sacrifice for the sins 50 has cursed upon the Earth. Make no mistake; every word out of his mouth is a third eye blindfold.

Seriously, aside from the first C.Styles and Bang Out beat, Buckwild's brass based "I Don't Need 'Em," and, to an extent, the two Needlz tracks (though initially interesting, go absolutely nowhere) there is nothing redeeming about this album. It's pretty much all the same synth leads, bang-bang beats, and tired rhymes as every other Aftermath related project since The Eminem Show, which wasn't that great either, definitively marking the end of Shady's creativity and growth as an artist. But Em still has tangible, inarguable skills; he can say a lot of words very fast and make them rhyme and flow, whereas 50 Cent carries none of his redeeming moral dilemmas at the same time as boasting comparatively limited lyrical wit, imagination, and vocabulary. Every track is about how tough he is, his sexual prowess, how he likes to party, or all three. In and about that, he's blindly violent, racist, sexist, homophobic, greedy, egotistical, and uneducated. He's an extremely awful person inside and out (at least his 50 Cent persona), who profits from tainting the expectations of what African-Americans can make of themselves (thank you Bill Cosby for finally saying it), glorifying the acquisition of wealth and power at any cost and fanning the flames of universal hatred in the process. For the sake of your mind and for those of future generations, please think about what you're listening to.

The way I see it, hip-hop started off underground and took many years until it was fully embraced by the mainstream. When it was so young a genre, those who originated it rapped about real events freshly burned in infamy, about the state of affairs responsible for their development to that point ("The Black CNN" as it was called). The apparently boastful attitude of the pioneers about their crimes and situations seemed like more of an honest triumph of the human character over circumstance. Eventually the top selling rap outfits became the top selling musical acts. Those carrying the brightest torches didn't want to wreck the formula that made them, and so rap, now actually hip-pop, became stagnant. But a new breed of rap was already developing in the underground and began to progress the genre to new levels of honesty, artistic integrity, and moving creativity. And so here we are, where the sound and passion of the underground is slowly being co-opted at the outskirts of hip-hop by the likes of Kanye West, while the rest work or tread the line between hop and pop. Every genre goes through this type of change -- a growth, death, and rebirth -- it's a natural process of development and public patience; but the big three of hip-pop today -- Eminem, 50, and Dr. Dre who took in a combined $54.2 million in 2004 -- represent the old order of uncreative over-actors clinging to the last remains of a tired outlook that is now utterly irrelevant, referring to real life events only in the past tense, these said events that gave them their supposed credibility now either ancient '80s history or were completely hypothetical in the first place. Their brand of theatre has been boiled down to a series of fiery decade old reminiscences, pathetic squabbles with their peers over respect, and grotesquely violent acts without meaning, all to propagate the façade of true strife in an effort to justify the pointless lives they have led and to encourage others to be as absurd and childish as they are to keep their crumbling empire in tact for a few more years. But it can't last forever. Even cancer has a cure... no matter how long it takes; it's only a matter of time until we find it.

Thank You TMT.

How to get girls
and other expert dating advice.

This is hands down the best advice you'll ever hear. Write it on your wall right now. In fact, tattoo it on the inside of your eyelids:

FORGET ABOUT HER.

People always wonder about the meaning of life. I know the answer. The meaning of life for women is to deprive men's lives from having any meaning. That way neither gender has a meaning and we both live and die miserable and pointless lives.

Have you ever been on a date and gone home with something besides a used condom stuck to your underwear? Have you ever taken a girl out to dinner and had anything exciting happen besides the traditional ten second orgasm? Hell no. I have never gone on a date and left with a new car or a pay raise or new toy of any kind. Zero. Ever. Girls are a waste of time.

Some girls don't even grant you the ten seconds of pleasure that you worked so hard to achieve. You go on a date and stare at her tits all night wishing she'd shut up. Girls should wake up and realize how much we don't care. Why do they think we take them out to dinner? It's because their silence while chewing is worth an $80 check. You throw a steak in front of her and hope she'll pause to eat it which will allow your brain time to forget all the garbage she just spewed out at you, but she keeps yakking. How do they do that? The female mouth is an amazing organ. It's probably the most tenacious thing on the planet. You could cut out her tongue, stick a ball gag down her throat, slice her vocal chords to little pieces, and she'd still sit there yakking away like a little dog. More yakking. Yak yak yak.

Back in the day, women couldn't yak unless men allowed them to. We came off as assholes, but we just wanted some silence. Rebellious females all over the world formed groups of feminists who created conspiracy theories about men being control freaks and wanting power. Hell no, we just wanted you to shut the fuck up for two seconds and spread your legs. That's it. You can have the power, just give us the pussy.

Guys know how it works. We've known for a long time. Girls, this is my dating advice for you. I made it into poem format because that might rub on smoother:

Men have power,
women have vagina.
If women want power,
trade for it with vagina.

(Notice how I rhymed power with power and vagina with vagina? That's not because I'm a bad poet, it's because women need to be told at least twice before they have any chance of understanding something.)

Women want both power and purity. These days, it's not uncommon for a virgin to be class president. Back in the day, if a girl wanted to get high up in the system, she had to put out like a pornstar. A female campaigning back then would consist of a girl crouched on her knees in the hall, smiling like the Holland Tunnel with cum dribbling out her lips and mumbling, "Vote for me."

Anyway, back to the prude girl scenario. You get through the date and a wave of disgust washes over you as you come to realize that she's not going to put out. You hide it (because there's always a chance next time), kiss her on the cheek, and leave. When you get home, you sit on your bed, shake your head, and think, "Wow, what the hell happened to my night? I'm cold, lonely, sober, and all I have to show for it is a cum stain on my pants from dry humping that bitch's couch all night long." You vow to never waste time on a girl ever again. Needless to say, the next day you're calling her up lying about what a great time you had, hoping the second date will be golden.

I had a girlfriend a while ago. It lasted an entire year. When I try to recollect anything from that twelve month period, I get a big "Error 404: Page Not Found" in my brain. Relationships are the black hole of memory. Nothing productive ever happens. Christians always talk about that thirty year period when Jesus was unaccounted for. Christ wasn't studying Buddhism or up in heaven with God. Hell no. He had a girlfriend. Jesus says to his girlfriend, "Darling, people are dying, I need to go outside and save them." She yaks back, "No, you're staying home and we're cuddling on the couch for eight hours while I complain about an evil woman at my job."
"But honey, we've done that every day for the past twelve years. Don't you understand? I'm the fucking chosen one. Man you're a stupid bitch. Jesus fucking Christ. When I'm elected god, you're the first person to get AIDS."
"What's AIDS?"
"It's a disease I'm going to invent to annihilate fa... Nevermind. Come here and bless my giant erection with your holy face."
"I don't want to suck your dick, your cum tastes like soggy communion."
"Okay, I'll turn my jizz into wine, just get over here."

What really sucks is that none of that rationalizing matters. Sex drive is beyond any logic or rational thinking. No matter how much a guy tries to clear his mind of girls, they keep popping up like a boner on oral presentation day. Our lives revolve around an orgasm and it's sickening. I sicken myself. All I do is sit around thinking about sex. Who I'd like to fuck, places I'd like to fuck, celebrities I'd like to fuck, animals I'd like to... see at the zoo with a girl before I fuck her. I have a few goals in life. While some seem good-hearted and admirable, all my plans derive right down to my overwhelming sex drive.

My Life Goals

1. Win the Nobel Peace Prize (so I can fuck hot librarians).

2. Win a gold medal in the Olympics (so I can fuck hot gymnists).

3. End world hunger (so Ethiopian hotties will live long enough to reach puberty and I can fuck them).

4. Swim the Puget Sound (so I can get buff and chicks will want to fuck me).

5. Save the rainforests (so I can fuck hot native tribal princesses).

6. Form a kickass band (so I can fuck hot groupies).

7. Fuck a girl (so I can get better at fucking girls and fuck more girls).

8. Get married (so that when I'm too old to fuck girls, I can still fuck a girl).

9. Have kids (because eighteen years of pain is worth that one night of no protection).

See? It's ridiculous. I know every other hereterosexual guy out there feels the exact same way. They read this and think "Yeah, that's sad but true." Girls read this and think "Wow, I better act offended because I know he's right and I don't want to be faced with the awful truth because I'm a girl and I have a very hard time accepting the truth when I would rather it were a lie." Females get pissed at guys who say this kind of thing because they want it to be a lie. They say we degrade women. We're not degrading women, we're telling the truth. That's like saying, "Rocks are heavy" is degrading rocks. That is the truth. Girls, it's like a penis - we know it's hard, but you have to learn to deal with it.

The female fantasy consists of a man who loves them. It will never happen. Men don't love you, they love the sex you and your friends provide. Need proof? Go get married and the second you get to your honeymoon suite, tell the man that you've vowed a life of celebacy. He'll spend a few hours trying to convince you to change your ways, but when it appears futile, he'll divorce you that night and say it was because the kids are too much of a responsibility. What kids? You don't even have kids yet. Shut the hell up. Guys... want... sex. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less. Break through that barrier of estrogen and get it through your cute little skulls.

One more time:

MEN... WANT... SEX.

I realized I'm a master of beatboxing. I walked up to a table and I was all like, "Yo, yo boom boom chicka boom boom BOP wicka wicka can i t-t-t-tizza tizza take your o-ora-ora orda?" Then I'm all lyke:

"Yo dawgs, I dropped some PHAT SHIT!
Ya betta leave a PHAT TIP!
Or I blast ya wit my autoMATIC!
I solve complex math equations with a formula called quadRATIC!"

Then my boss was in the background mixing it up on her turntables like WICKA WICKA WICKA!!! Then we all turned black and wore bandanas and wife beaters. The customers turned into hot chicks and they danced around on the tables. I hopped in my six-four and cruised around the kitchen while making hand gestures at all the good-looking hostesses. That's when the lights cut out in the dining room and crazy lights started flashing everywhere. Someone loaded a bowl into the fog machine and everyone in the place started whacking out and seeing blocks. That's about when I grabbed myself a few hotties and went into the janitors closet.

I'm just kidding, that never happened. Actually, a few elderly people came in and I served them halibut.

In case you've been camping out in the wilderness or stationed in Guam for the past several years, I suppose I should tell you a little bit about Ms. Hermione Granger. First of all, her name is pronounced her-MY-uh-nee, not her-my-OH-nee! You can remember where the accent goes because it's on the MY, as in Hermione is MY girl. Not yours, which means don’t even think about it.

Secondly, Hermione is the smartest girl at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Way smarter than me, you, or even Harry Potter. She knows a lot about everything, mainly because she reads a lot of books. I also read a ton of books, though mine are mostly sci-fi paperbacks that I pick up at library sales for about $.25 a piece.

Thirdly, I predict that Hermione Granger will one day be headmistress of Hogwarts. If for some reason she doesn’t become headmistress, I predict that she will become one of the greatest witches to ever graduate from Hogwarts. Perhaps she will be referred to as Hermione the Great, which is already what I call her when I’m showing one of my coworkers the picture of her that I have in my Velcro wallet. She truly is the headmistress of my heart.

"OK class, who wants to go out on a date
with Rahul?"