![]() ![]() ![]() He eventually realized just being 50 Cent isn’t enough to float a single onto the Billboard charts and put the triumphant comeback album Black Magic AKA Street King Immortal on hold until he could figure out how to make it a profitable venture. It’s a fallacy 50 Cent knows all too well after two years spent spitballing aborted lead singles for a new album to varying degrees of audience apathy. Both erred in assuming the pervading presence of celebrities was enough to negate public disinterest in the artist. LL’s Authentic cast a wider net, corralling everyone from Brad Paisley to Eddie Van Halen into the Queens legend’s return to rap after a lengthy sabbatical and a break from Def Jam. sought to restore hip-hop’s fourth best-selling artist of all time to a position of dominance by pairing him with a parade of peak A-listers, from Nicki Minaj and Pharrell to T.I., Future, and 2 Chainz. Animal Ambition is not the result of that plan-it's an important stepping stone in it.Ī year ago, erstwhile hip-hop heavy hitters Nelly and LL Cool J found themselves in a similar space. And yet, for reasons presently opaque (boredom, sport, nostalgia-more than likely a bit of all three) he’s cooked up a protracted plan to get his rap career back. To his credit, 50 is an elite businessman, preternaturally aware, it would seem, that the ill will he engendered in his heyday hangs over his head like an iced-out sword of Damocles and that the five year break since his last proper album snuffed his buzz. During a recent Hot 97 interview, program director Ebro Darden point blank accused 50 of fracturing the New York rap mainstream and sending it into the present tailspin. When things got prickly within his own crew, he publicly excommunicated them one by one. But he used his power to marginalize his peers-Joes, Jadas, Cams, Nasirs. There was a time when Fif was hip-hop’s cash king, the face of the genre at the apex of its national crossover moment. The G-Unit general scored his first flop. Consider it the album before the album, and it plays out as interesting and often awesome, but put this next to his major works and it seems a bit off and quirky.The results are in: 50 Cent’s new album Animal Ambition moved less than 40,000 units its first week out. The whole package comes off as 50's first "street release," one where mixtape cuts are bundled with Trey Songz-featuring singles (and in the grand G-Unit style of overdoing everything, there's a Deluxe version made available for the superfan). Like those mixtapes, Animal Ambition lets the tracks run out with long, slow fades and introduces the concept of "track list ambiguity" with a running order that's just as good shuffled. ![]() Dre production, and after a lazy hook, a woozy chorus, and a profanity-laced and vicious verse, the cut "Hustler" recalls the high-quality, street-worthy tracks that would land on old G-Unit Radio mixtapes, but therein lies the problem. ![]() It's quite good though, as is the title track with its strange light funk then there's the broken beat, bone-chilling lyrics ("We by the schoolyard, waitin' for you to get your kid"), and guest appearances from Jadakiss and Kidd Kidd that make "Irregular Heartbeat" a great candidate for any mix titled "Ski Mask Way." Giving the album some radio-worthy relief, the "Smoke" is a Euro-disco and dro influenced redo of "In Da Club" with guest star Trey Songz appearing on the album's lone Dr. That might help explain why the hypnotic "Hold On" opens this one not with a kick, but with a quirk, as it's the kind of stoned immaculate that doesn't cause one to shudder. Know that 2014's Animal Ambition isn't that album but instead, a collection of new cuts meant to clean the creative pipes as 50 gets back to retooling his unreleased, high-profile effort. Not only that, but he took his unreleased Street King Immortal album with him. Dre, leaving the Interscope, Shady, and Aftermath label family after 12 fruitful years. With his mentors/friends off selling companies to Apple for billions of dollars, or re-entering the mainstream game with an album dispatched from 8 Mile, rapper/mogul 50 Cent decided to distance himself from the business world of Iovine, Eminem, and Dr. ![]()
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