50 Cent Fails With Self Destruct

50 Cent, once at the forefront of rap music, returns with Before I Self Destruct—but his fourth solo effort isn’t impressing the critics. “Though packed with tough beats, dense production and 50's most ferocious delivery in years, the gloats about shootings, drugs and bloody 'hoods feel about as fresh as a Saw sequel,” writes Edna Gundersen in USA Today. The album “isn't likely to renew 50 Cent's currency.”

Fitty’s ferocity is refreshing when you consider “the current hip-pop landscape where meat'n'potatoes gangsta is actually kinda novel,” writes Ian Cohen for Pitchfork, “but the fun of talking about the record overstates its actual quality. After initially promising a return to form, 50 doesn't have the ability or initiative to hold the listener's interest over the long run.”
(More 50 Cent stories.)