Shortly before the Sept. 11 release of their respective albums, musician Curtis Jackson, known better by his stage name 50 Cent, issued a challenge to Kanye West. If Kayne’s album outsold his, he claimed he would leave the music industry. True to his word, after his Curtis was outsold by West’s Graduation to the tune of 250,000 copies in the first week, he got up in front of reporters early last week to announce his retirement from the music industry.
Shock and incredulity at 50 Cent’s latest move have been near-universal.
“Talking like that, like 50 did, it’s what all rap artists do,” said Raymond Chesterfield of The Source, a monthly hip-hop magazine. “It’s a part of the image. But to actually follow through? Simply preposterous.”
“This is quite simply incredible that one of the most successful recording artists of our time would hold himself to such a flippant and nonchalant remark and outright leave the business over a petty sales feud,” wrote journalist Mark Smith of Turntable Digest.
An even bigger surprise was in store for the world the following week, when Jackson threw a low-key book launch party at an upscale Manhattan bookstore to promote his first foray into the literary world — a volume of poetry.
My Song, a slim collection of deeply personal poems, which Jackson claims has been culled from almost two decades of his life, was released this week to the press and the public at large, and its arrival quickly became one of the most sensational literary events of the year. Critics and readers across the country and among Jackson’s considerable overseas following have reacted with a broad spectrum of emotions ranging from maddening confusion to lavish praise.
In “Tough Love” from his book, Jackson writes, “Love was my mistress, and the hustle my wife/crack kept me rich, but love kept me alive.” Elsewhere in “Dank Nugs” he examines a pastoral scene in the midst of poverty, “When weed last in the garden bloom’d/and the balm of summer swelled to burst/I sent smoke tendrils ’round my room/like carousels of stoner mirth.” In an elegy for a deceased friend he mourns, “There was never so true a friend as you/nor better times than those which we have shared/among the projects of the two-one-two/and where the east river doth make its bend.”
The reaction from established poetry critics has been overwhelmingly positive.
“50’s work is really amazing,” said critic Max Rheinold in American Poetry, a biweekly journal of the American Poet’s Society. “His rhyme schemes are very traditional and his wording is for the most part archaic, but the themes he explores and his use of irony and humor are traits of a master poet.
Others were even more enthusiastic, such as Willa Rogers of The Stranger, a Seattle alternative weekly.
“I think what we have in My Song is a revival of transcendentalism, centered in the projects instead of the wilderness, but equally devoted to the spirit,” she said. “50 Cent has effectively become the next Ralph Waldo Emerson.”
When questioned about his book and his decision to leave the music business, Jackson has been hesitant to respond, but he has claimed that his change of direction has much to do with his influences.
“I’ve always loved Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson and they’ve always been strong influences on my work, so I felt that maybe it was time to pay homage to them,” he told one reporter present at a reading in Detroit Wednesday.
The book is selling strongly — though there’s little chance it will top 50’s album sales — and Jackson has indicated plans to continue producing poetry, though he does not rule out a Jay-Z-style return to form.
“I’m not going to say I’m not,” he said at a reading earlier this week. Or, as his poem “Journey” proclaims, “Stray not, eyes, but stand fast and fix’d/staunch thine stream of tears/you may yet glimpse through the heavy mist/that will calm your fears.”
Head: Move over Emerson
Sub: 50 Cent sires transcendental poetry masterpiece My Song
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