50 Cent’s sophomore effort is fun, familiar

50 Cent

“The Massacre” (Shady/ Aftermath/ Interscope)

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50 Cent’s sophomore album, the most anticipated rap release of 2005 so far, is guided by a simple mantra: If it ain’t broke, why fix it?

“It” would be the musical formula that helped the rapper’s debut, “Get Rich or Die Tryin’,” move nearly 1 million units in one week. A brazen capitalist -- “being broke is against my religion,” he rhymes on a new track -- 50 doubtless approached his follow-up effort pragmatically: Artistic growth is good, but more of the same is even better.

So we get “The Massacre” (in stores Thursday), a joyride of an album that’s as fun as it is familiar. The cover photo speaks a thousand words. It features the shirtless rapper whose gleaming pectorals we know well -- from the near-identical cover of “Get Rich or Die Tryin’” -- but here, the muscles have been stenciled over, giving 50 the look of a comic book character: Behold “Supergangsta!”

He rhymes about the same subjects -- his “Teflon vest,” his Jamaica, Queens, neighborhood, competing rappers (Jadakiss, Fat Joe, Nas, Ja Rule) who can’t compare -- but on this 22-track album, he rhymes for twice as long and with twice the gusto.

And before you know it, the amoral Supergangsta -- “Don’t know if I’m God’s child or I’m Satan’s angel,” he raps -- has you cheerfully humming along to lyrics about how to “lock and load” and pop AKs. Such is the allure of 50’s formula, which is so puckishly congenial, you can’t blame him for repeating it.

His beats -- a handful from hit-makers Dr. Dre, Eminem and Scott Storch, most others by smaller-name producers -- are insistent, mechanical and stadium-appropriate. His terse hooks, usually sung boldly off-key by 50 himself, resemble warped nursery rhymes: Who else can craft a catchy chorus from a line like “I’m Supposed to Die Tonight,” or transform the “Batman and Robin” theme into a spunky duet with Eminem, about gangsters named “Gatman and Robbin’?”

Even the current single “Piggy Bank,” full of pointed barbs at other rappers, sounds less like a “diss” track than a playful, grade-school taunt.

“The Massacre” feels about six songs too long, but ultimately, excess is its greatest asset: By being so relentlessly over-the-top in his gangsterism, 50 Cent succeeds in defusing its vulgarity.

He may be caught up in real-life drama (he was near the scene of a shooting at a radio station), but on record, 50’s gangsta music sounds less like reality rap and more like jolly good fun.

-- Baz Dreisinger