http://slyoyster.com

Wow! Call me surprised, since 50 Cent (or has he pulled a Rock and goes by Curtis Jackson now?) can’t rap or act, but his new videogame 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand looks kinda fun.

In the game (how do they come up with this shit?) 50 Cent performs a concert somewhere in the war-torn Middle East, natch, but, afterward, the show’s promoter refuses to pay him in cash (what no paypal?) and instead gives him a diamond-encrusted skull. Obviously, this is before Indiana Jones got his grubby mitts on it.

On the way to the airport, 50 gets robbed by mysterious attackers (possibly Osama bin Laden or some such terrorist), and it’s up to him and his entourage to reclaim the skull using only their steely wit and sweaty brows. And by wit we mean AK-47s, rocket launchers, tanks, fists, shivs. The usual.

[Kotaku]

I didn’t even realize 50 Cent was still making music.  Shows how little I know.

The New York Times has a piece about 50 Cent’s tour to promote his new album, “T.O.S.: Terminate on Sight”—apparently someone didn’t tell him that “on” doesn’t need its own initial, but whatever.

Since getting shower-screwed with album sales by Kanye West during that much-hyped, totally-boring hullabaloo a while back, 50 seemed to slip into obscurity.  Sure, he got a videogame—50 Cent: Bulletproof—which scored a predictable 47 out of 100 on Metacritic.  And sure, that videogame, somehow, is getting a sequel called Blood in the Sand, but what happened to the music, yo?  Wasn’t he supposed to be some sort of epiphany amidst crushing staleness in the rap scene?  Or were we all duped into believing something may actually change in gansta rap?

Anyway, the article is incredibly sad.  It details 50’s latest attempts to rise again to some semblance of cultural importance by unsuccessfully starting new media feuds and meanwhile experiencing poor album sales.

Author Jon Caramanica doesn’t have a lot of positive things to say about Terminate on Sight and hints that 50’s last shreds of, well, anything come from his previous works, all of which were unimpressive in and of themselves.

Being a 25-year-old 85-year-old, I won’t ever listen to the album, but if you do, readers, lemme know what it’s like.  I’ll probably ignore what you say but hey, that’s show business.