50 Cent.
New York native Curtis James Jackson III had a difficult childhood. But sometimes a similar fate can be an advantage. He has built an impressive career as an artist with considerable influence on the current generation based on his story as a juvenile delinquent, combined with his undeniable business skills. He took the nickname "50 Cent" from the murdered Bronx thief Kelvin Martin. The nickname, in Jackson's words, "says everything that needs to be said," including that he can take care of himself. At the age of 22, his then-girlfriend Shaniqua Tompkins gave birth to a son, Marquis Jackson, and this shifted Jackson's perception of the world and inspired his artistic career, despite legal wrangling over child custody and complex property negotiations, with the copious participation of the media.
There aren't many indoor hip-hop concerts in the Czech Republic per season, so the first announced concert by one of the genre's biggest contemporary stars sold out quickly. The fake news about Eminem's planned performance verified the Czech audience's interest in the rap scene, so the O2 arena hosted two events in a row due to the extraordinary interest. The first one took place on Monday, October 17, 2022. 50 Cent doesn't give too many opportunities for opening acts to play in front of his audience. That was the case this time as well. Shortly after 8 p.m., DJ Martin Brick opened his opening set with the somewhat vague question, "Are you looking forward to it?" A dose of reproduced hip hop was spiced up with information about rapper Eminem's current anniversary, and the slowly filling arena heard a more than twenty-year-old track composed by birthday boy The Real Slim Shady. In the pause that ensued, musicians began to flock to their instruments on the darkened stage's first floor. A battery of drums, a mixing desk and two keyboards. Two large, inflatable champagne bottles frame the stage with twelve speakers, and at a minute after 9pm a trio of vocalists emerge, among them 50 Cent in a blue Rangers jersey, jeans and blue trainers. Gangsta rap rolls into the near-capacity venue (no upper galleries), and twenty minutes into the mixtape, ten songs have been played. Among them, the well-crafted P.I.M.P (pimp) and the directly following Candy Shop. A richly textured rear projection offers, among other things, portraits of the allied rapper Snoop Dogg. The vocalists struggle a bit with intonation and staccato overpowers the tone production. In The Woo (by Pop Smoke), four scantily clad dancers in black tights join in, enriching the audience's view of their quivering buttocks for the rest of the show - save for brief passages. Pyrotechnics, coloured fires and lasers are involved. There's an excellent guitar solo in Ayo Technology (originally Ayo Pornography, 2007, album Curtis, produced by Timbaland) and another hilarious one in I ´m the Man (2016, I´m the Man). Sandwiched between the two solos is the classic Many Men (2003, Get Rich or Die Tryin'). By then half the planned set has been played and the violinist comes on to play the overture to No Romeo No Juliet (2016, No Romeo No Juliet). The frontmen, with glittering chains around their necks, move from one side to the other, and behind them the scene changes to red. 50 Cent changes into a T-shirt and sneakers and lets a series of pictographs of nude dancers run behind him in Outta Control. There's a brief pause, followed by a massive ten-track encore, with Baby By Me (2009's Before I Self Destruct) and Down On Me, a cover of Jeremi's 2010 track, standing out in terms of footage. For a good part of the show, the guitarist, five-string bassist and drummer are pretty bored, as most of the music is samples adapted for mixtape purposes. The concert is therefore de facto a halfplayback for the most part. At the end, though, the live musicians, clad in T-shirts with the 50 Cent logo, do play, and that's when everyone else leaves the stage. And they're doing great.
The 50 Cent concert was definitely an interesting and novel experience. Musical works based on the verse culture of crime, the drug scene and criminality translated into a functioning business with the magical hallmark of influencing are arguably one of the phenomena of our time.