Now I haven’t bought any of Curtis Jackson’s music since…ever, because it just doesn’t speak to me. For the most part, it never has, although I thought the song, “How To Rob,” definitely deserves to be menitoned in the same breath as Biggie’s “Dreams.” That song notwithstanding, I just don’t fool with Curtis like that. Because he is such a major celebrity and has sold goo-goggles of records, however, I am treated to instances of his wit and wisdom. And in this case, I’m only being partially facetious. Reading an interview with him in Spin Magazine, it’s obvious to me that 50 is not dumb. At all. When it suits his purpose, he can clearly detail the connection between a person’s media choices and that person’s life decisions. When it comes to his music, however, there is no such thing.
He says the following about hip-hop vs. other forms of entertainment:
Then are these black leaders, like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and Benjamin Chavis and Russell Simmons, who are saying hip-hop should be cleaned up, just hypocrites who are looking for easy publicity?They don’t mind the cable television programs giving you the same content; they don’t mind the Internet having the same content available. I think it affects people a lot more to see a film where somebody realistically gets their head blown off than to listen to somebody rapping for three minutes. And what about rock’n'roll? The guy who shot up Virginia Tech was a Led Zeppelin and Nirvana fan. If he’d had a 50 Cent CD in his case, we probably wouldn’t even be talking right now.
Honestly? That last sentence? I believe that’s absolutely true. Had the shooter at Virginia Tech been listening to 50 or some other rapper, people would have been hopping rain dances about how hip-hop has to be stopped. While I’m sure the entertainment angle was explored, in his case, I think the focus was on video games, I think it’s very interesting the types of material that are labeled in the media as being more dangerous than others. In some ways, it makes me think of the disparity between crack and cocaine. What’s the difference in the material? Nothing, really. Crack is cocaine. It’s not any more or less addictive. But the difference in sentencing? Quite substantial. Some have suggested, and I’m not disinclined to believe it, that the difference is the perception of who’s selling it and who’s using it. Same thing here.
Then 50 goes on to talk about Scarface. And I think he has a valid point. To an extent.
…Look, let’s talk about Scarface [the 1983 cocaine odyssey written by Oliver Stone and directed by Brian DePalma]. OK? And how it impacted people. It was more than just violence in a film. It gave you a description of somebody coming from not having anything, to selling drugs to the point where they made it beyond the expectations of anybody who actually sells drugs in the neighborhood. It showed us that. And Godfather, Goodfellas, those were movies that made an impression. If you made a study of people who are incarcerated and asked them if they have those films on rotation, I have no doubt they would tell you, yes, they watch those films, repeatedly. Did that condition them mentally to go out and do what they did?No, but all those films ended very badly, and you can say that there was a moral of sorts involved because the heroes all died or were ruined.
And you know what people are gonna say? “I’m gonna do exactly what he did, I’m just not gonna go out like he did!” The statistics tell you that [if you're selling drugs] your ass is going to jail or you’re dying, one or the other. It’s obvious. And people know that, and they still go into that life. They tell themselves that they’re going to get out before something bad happens. It doesn’t matter what movie they’re watching or what song they’re listening to. You can’t use entertainment as an excuse.
To an extent, what he’s saying is true. The decision is made without respect to what type of entertainment is consumed. Yet, Curtis later points out that the people consume that exact type of material in order to do what they’re going to do. So which is it? Either it doesn’t have an impact or it does. There is no such thing as “it can impact you if you want it to, but if you don’t it won’t.” Cuz honestly, my follow-up question would be this: do you think people’s behavior would be the same if they listened to “Lord Help Me” by Donny Hathaway50 times a day? Now intuitively, I know that some people would commit mayhem no matter what they listened to. At the same time, it’s also true that what a person feeds himself shapes the person he becomes. So my guess is that a substantial portion of people on the “Lord Help Me” diet would begin to think and behave differently than the ones on the “Murda, Murda, Murda” diet. But that only makes sense. And for Cent, it’s all about dollars.
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