If you live in New York you’ve heard of 50 Cent. Even if you don’t live in New York, chances are you’ve heard of him. Curtis Jackson, a.k.a. 50 Cent has turned a career of underground mixtapes and street violence into the foundation for one of the greatest success stories in hip-hop. Get Rich or Die Trying was unquestionably the most anticipated album of the year – and when it dropped reviews ran from absolutely glowing to barely lukewarm. But it really didn’t matter what the reviews said. It was already decided that 50 was the hottest thing out long before his album dropped, and no critic in the world could tell New York that 50 Cent was not the future.

Once Eminem and Dr. Dre picked up 50, the shit had already hit the fan. 50’s history of getting shot up and stabbed up, his connection to Jam Master Jay as a close friend, his looks, his charisma, his underground credibility and his association with Em and Dre made a brilliant set-up for success. And it didn’t hurt that he could write.

Get Rich or Die Trying is a strong album even when it’s difficult to listen to – a sure to be classic in the years that follow. 50 comes out on the album alternately angry, wary, tongue-in-cheek and demented, and it’s not always the most pleasant or enlightening stuff to listen to. He doesn’t preach like Nas, he doesn’t despair like Tupac, he doesn’t turn in on himself like Biggie – you wonder sometimes what it is you’re listening for. Is it just to hear the ranting frenzied anger of a traumatized young man?

Well, sort of. Let’s look at the giants in hip-hop: Biggie and Tupac naturally stand out as two towering figures – there’s Jay-Z, Nas, Eminem, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, etc… I could go on, but those are a handful of artists whose names are pretty well known and who have at some time or another received strong critical acclaim for their work.

Here’s where this gets to be a little fun. I’m not naïve enough to suggest that these are the hottest rappers alive – that there aren’t artists struggling in obscurity – or even underground acts on small labels with records you can find in a Virgin Megastore or a Tower Records that are better writers. But these are the artists that have caught the culture’s attention – and when you talk about a young, burgeoning art form like hip-hop, it’s what captures the culture’s attention that decides which direction the form is going to take. So that there’s a lot more at stake blowing up as a rapper than say, being the next Wynton Marsalis.

Then again, the outlaw, the underground artist kicking against the pricks has always fascinated Americans. Going back to the list – we look at Dr. Dre – coming straight outta Compton with NWA – how the real turning point in NWA’s career came when the FBI sent them a cease and desist letter for “Fuck tha Police.” After that they were selling more records than any other artist not on mainstream radio. When NWA disbanded and Dre started his own thing with Snoop Dogg, he was coming with a hot new sound. Dre was really starting to develop his skills as a producer, but the star rapper on The Chronic was Snoop, whose smooth delivery was reminiscent of Slick Rick and Doug E. Fresh, and who carried lyrics over beats with a humorous lilt that was irresistible. Snoop Dogg was pimp and gangsta all rolled up in one – and by collaborating with Dre, he made the two of them a cool as hell team that couldn’t be beat – and was only equaled later on when Eminem (a character in his own right) came into the picture. 

Meanwhile, Biggie, Pac and Nas were each coming out with their own thing – Nas was the wise observer of street life caught between being a part of it and wanting to raise himself and his people above it. Jay-Z was the playboy – a Brooklyn boy who used to sling crack and pulled himself out of the streets through his own élan. Biggie was the hundred percent gangsta – but he was a troubled gangsta. He slipped into tirades of self-doubt, self-hate and paranoia that no other famous hip-hop artist before him had slipped into. And he made it look good. Tupac, on the other hand, was coming out like Marvin Gaye, writing songs despairing of and glorifying in street life, searching for love and compassion and meanwhile living a life that kept him in constant danger from the situations he despaired of. He wrote songs that had people “feeling like black was the thing to be,” and died early, exactly as he’d been long predicting.

The common denominator among these artists is a combination of talent and the ability to self-mythologize. A lot of artists out there undoubtedly can put verses together as well or better than any of these artists, but without the ability to self-mythologize, these artists don’t have the advantage of being able to capture the imagination of the American public.

Self-mythologizing, after all, is just another element of the art – an additional aspect. It’s an additional aspect to writing in general. Whenever you sit down and write something you reveal something about yourself. It’s unavoidable – and, as the joke goes, the more you try to conceal shit, the more you end up revealing shit. Which is just to say that writing is not only manipulating the words so that the audience is under your control in how they perceive the subject, but also manipulating the words so that the audience is under your control in how they perceive the writer. When 50 emerges from the underground, signed by Shady/Aftermath, he’s already recorded several underground albums, and he’s bringing to the table an entire mythology about himself that makes him the most exciting figure hip-hop has seen in a while.

A lot of critics went after Get Rich or Die Trying for focusing on the Ja Rule beef. (Where are all those people I’d see singing “I’m not always there when you call” now? No one wants to admit they used to listen to Ja.) 50’s critics argued that the album was too violent, empty, vapid and didn’t have the meat that Ready to Die or Illmatic had, that comparisons to Biggie and Tupac were unfounded. Well, maybe. But the thing about Get Rich or Die Trying is that it manages to be an entertaining, well written, well constructed album throughout (excluding a few tracks that could have been left out) and at the same time elevates 50’s myth to the next level. By focusing on the beef with Ja Rule, 50 is essentially just writing the first chapter of the 50 Cent show. Every aspect of Get Rich or Die Trying is self-mythologizing. In the shout-outs 50 shouts out God first, himself second for “getting me out of the hood.” When 50 was locked up overnight for being caught with firearms he recorded a track from prison. His comment on this decision was that he was “a marketing genius.” Given where he’s at right now, it looks like he might have a point.

Beyond marketing however, the real question comes down to what is good writing? Is self-mythologizing a valid aspect of strong writing? With artists like Nas and Tupac, it’s easier to understand them as strong writers, because they come from a politically conscious perspective.  Black American art has traditionally been a protest art in some form or another. Nas and Tupac carry on the tradition as well as anyone else out there. At the same time they maintain contradictions essential to hip-hop culture. Both artists slip into misogyny and misanthropy. Both are complex figures, torn between their upbringing and their desire for change. It’s not enough that they are these contradictory uncertain characters we understand them to be: they had to make us understand them in this way through their writing.

But how about Jay-Z or Biggie Smalls? Biggie comes off, at first, kind of just like a thug. A smooth thug, to be sure, but does he really have anything to say? Listening more closely however, reveals a character written just as complexly as Nas’ or Tupac’s character – a character who receives a call from himself  (depending how you interpret Biggie rapping as “Pop from the Barber shop”) late at night to tell himself that people he used to know want him dead because of his success. Biggie’s Ready to Die is a montage of paranoid, desperate and violent songs relived through sharp, well-painted scenes that ends with a song that begins, “When I die, fuck it, I wanna go to Hell/ Cuz I’m a piece of shit, it ain’t too hard to fucking tell.”

Jay-Z, on the other hand, with his “much Versace swagger” comes from a whole different angle. Biggie blings like no one else before him, but Jay takes it to a whole new level. Jay’s persona has its contradictions and its depth, but mostly he’s just coming out like a playa. Most of Jay’s work – especially his well-known work – couldn’t on the surface be considered protest art in any way, shape or form. But he still manages to deliver good rhymes – to write this character Jay-Z into existence – and before the arrival of 50 Cent, he managed to have a lot of New York convinced that he would always be the reigning king of hip-hop. Jay brought a lot of the party back into hip-hop. He was dropping the hottest club tracks, the hottest summer jams and he had a whole lot of people without much else going for them “feeling like black was the thing to be.”

So what about 50 Cent and Get Rich or Die Trying? There was a recent article in the Village Voice suggesting that 50’s popularity was just a growing nostalgia for the 80’s crack-era violence and gang wars in inner city neighborhoods. Well, maybe, but probably not. 50 certainly plays off the energy, anger and horror of gangsta rap artists like NWA, Mobb Deep and the Geto Boys, but 50’s angle is a little different. From the first track to the last on Get Rich or Die Trying 50 flies through the album like a bipolar roller coaster. One moment he’s on top of the world, the most confident artist in hip-hop history – the next minute he’s terrified, bitter and struggling. Above all, he’s a survivor. He’s spent most of his life an underground artist, struggling, like most of us spend most of our lives struggling in obscurity towards whatever our dreams may be. He’s had shit turn on him right when it seemed like things were turning around for him – like getting shot and dropped from Columbia a week before his album was supposed to be released. Most of us have felt frustration at prospects that looked like they were going to go through turn around and fall apart. 50’s story is the classic American rags-to-riches, guy-against-all-odds story that inspires people. And 50 writes this character exceptionally well. 50’s contradictions are as deep and as complicated as Nas’ – his gangsta swagger as vicious as Biggie’s – his frailties as confusing as Tupac’s – and his ability to inspire as strong as Jay-Z’s.

So what is good writing? And how do we understand hip-hop writing? Is it impossible to talk about hip-hop writing outside of the context of self-mythologizing?  Is it impossible to even talk about American writing in general outside the context of self-mythologizing? Socially conscious groups like The Roots do a whole lot less self-mythologizing than individual artists – and consequently their careers suffer for it. Americans have never been interested in groups so much as individuals. You can talk about Nirvana, but the star was Kurt Cobain. You can talk about the Doors, but you’re really talking about Morrison. You can talk about jazz quartets, but people want to know: who’s playing? “Charlie Parker? Miles? Trane? No? Oh. Oh well.”

It’s the legacy of the individual that speaks to us in almost all writing – even when we don’t know a single thing about the author – something about the connection established between artist and audience on that deeply personal, compassionate and human level. A writer begins to create that legacy the moment he puts the first sentence down on paper.