With “21 Questions,” though, 50 shamelessly drew from the Ja Rule playbook. When 50 became rap’s biggest star practically overnight, he effectively put Ja Rule’s hitmaking run in the dirt. But there’s one glaring exception that sits near the end of the LP, practically begging to be ignored.īefore Get Rich Or Die Tryin, 50 Cent had spent years mercilessly deriding his Queens adversary Ja Rule as a fake gangster, a paper tiger who wanted nothing more than to make sickly-sweet pop love songs. Dre and the other producers furnish 50 with tracks that sound just as massive as his persona. 50 sweetens that persona with catchy singsong hooks and with monster singalongs like “ In Da Club,” but he rarely breaks character. Before Get Rich, 50 had already established his image as a hungry, reckless tough guy, and Get Rich found ways to broadcast that image, to make it loom as something larger than life. On that record, 50 understood exactly who he was and who he wanted to be.

You really couldn’t ask for a debut album more cohesive and complete than 50 Cent’s Get Rich Or Die Tryin’. But that’s still a useful framework for evaluating a particular track’s place in the universe. I don’t agree with plenty of ego trip‘s selections tracks like Biggie’s “Respect” and Snoop Doggy Dogg’s “Who Am I (What’s My Name)” are incredible. & Rakim’s Paid In Full, “Mamacita” on Outkast’s Aquemini, that kind of thing. In rap, just as in every other genre, a great album can have a song that doesn’t meet the standard of the rest of the record: “Chinese Arithmetic” on Eric B. The crucial 1999 tome ego trip’s Book Of Rap Lists dedicates half a page to a self-explanatory concept: “Potholes In My Album: 17 Bumpy Songs On Otherwise Bumpin’ LPs.” You get it. In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present.

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