Has 50 Cent got another Get Rich or Die Tryin' in him?

The sound of two coins dropping. A gun cocks, then...BOOM! Nothing but drums and bass.

Whaddup, Blood?

If you were even remotely interested in hip-hop back in 2003, the first 10 seconds of Get Rich or Die Tryin' are etched in your mind and cause a completely involuntary reaction in the muscles of your neck. It was a sign of the times. It was the beginning of an empire. It was the birth of a monster! So, when 50 Cent said his newest album, Before I Self Destruct, was the sequel to Get Rich or Die Tryin'...well, let's just say that's a tall order. But with predictions of first week sales of the album hovering around 150,000 units, when GRoDT sold umpteen gajillion copies in the first 3 seconds (those are the official numbers), something just isn't adding up.

Before I go any further, let me first say that this is not a review. As we all know, opinions are like assholes. The only one that should really matter to you is your own.

For me, the way an album begins is crucial. We've already established that GRoDT opens with a bang. Destruct starts off kicking your door off the hinges with "Invasion." In the first verse you hear the hunger that made you love 50 six years ago, "I make it so hot, one shot'll melt yo' ass/I got popped up, cried 'til my eyes turned red/Then told myself in the mirror 'Nigga, you ain't dead!'" Sadly, by the time he's half-way through the hook, "You want some? Come get some/Nigga it's murder one when I toss my gun/You might see me let it off, you might see me run/But you won't see shit time the police come," that feeling of "Yeah, it's the old 50!" is replaced by, "Meh, it's the same old 50."

And, therein lies the problem. It's the classic gangsta rapper story. The hunger and shoot-em up persona are easy to buy into when all we know about you is that you're from Queens and you survived getting shot 99 times. But, after a mock album showdown with Kanye West, making a billion dollars from Vitamin Water, and reports that you spend a million dollars a year on security...well, you're going to have to come a little differently with it. Not to say that this isn't a good album. It is. It's completely plausible that if it were some up-and-coming artist that we know little about, this would be the next GRoDT. But, it isn't...so...it isn't.

But, it's not all bad news. Ne-Yo and Fif definitely deliver for the ladies on the album's single "Baby By Me." Fans drooling for the grime will devour tracks like "Crime Wave" and the gritty "Death to My Enemies." On the latter, when he growls into the mic "This ain't The Carter. Nigga, this is Sparta!" something inside you is going to say, "HELL YEAH!" Every time. On "Stretch" when talking about having no remorse about selling cocaine, and he delivers the line "I don't care if it's a sin. I don't care if you're 10/Look around kid. It's a cold world we're in," THAT'S what you came for. THAT'S why you buy a 50 Cent album. Like that old spaghetti sauce slogan, "It's in there!"

So, to answer the question "Is Before I Self Destruct a second Get Rich or Die Tryin'?", sure. Unfortunately, without a flux capacitor, 1.21 giggawatts and a DeLorean aimed for the year 2003, a second helping of GRoDT isn't going to give you the feeling that the first one did. Is it a good album? Strictly by the numbers, out of 16 tracks 7 are really good, 4 suck, and the other 5 are somewhere in between. So, by price-per-track rating, that makes this album worth 7 bucks. Take for that what you will.