Fifty Cent returns with his latest long player “Curtis” which should be in your record of emporium of choice as we speak. Seasoned listeners of the rap game will expect no great leaps forward from Fiddy on this album and its understandable to some degree. After all he’s come up through the ranks with a formula that works well for him. He stands like a monolithic figure in the genre but it’s the same status that has the potential to mark him as an impending dinosaur as well.
He brings along a cast of the usual suspects to bolster his performances including the likes of Eminem, Justin Timberlake, Mary J. Blige and Akon. Not to mention production duties courtesy of Dr Dre and his G-Unit cohorts. As a collection the content is pretty much as you would expect, pristine production values marks the album even though Dre’s touch is starting to look a little dated in places. Lyrical content is as always rotating heavily around sex, guns and getting shot and stabbed. Sadly it does become somewhat monotonous but there are little moments of salvation on the album. The recent single ‘Ayo Technology’ with Justin Timberlake has enough fizz in the production to elevate it above its brethren tracks. Akon serves to bring a little tension to proceedings with ‘I’ll Still Kill’ while three tracks in ‘I Get Money’ shows Fiddy on somewhat explosive form and bypasses his usual languid meandering verses. Still its other places like his collaboration with Robin Thicke on “Follow My Lead” which are so predictable it makes you wonder how they made it out of the studio. Elsewhere there are moments which sound like they shouldn’t have gone beyond the planning stages such is their tedium (Movin’ On Up/Straight To The Bank).
Fifty Cent might have made it to his third album, and there might be the odd spike of quality amidst these tracks and I don’t doubt for an instant that his career will roll on like the proverbial juggernaut for a time to come but if credibility is to be retained he needs to work considerably harder than this.
