50 Cent dismisses naysayers

50 CENT didn’t become hip-hop’s acid-tongued, finger-pointing MC -- think of him as a rap version of Bill O’Reilly -- because of his skill at understatement. Currently embroiled in a YouTube-based dis battle with Cam’ron of Harlem’s Dipset crew (“I have control over his emotions,” 50 asserted on Angie Martinez’s Hot 97 radio show), over the years, the Queens rapper has kept “beef” a steady part of hip-hop’s diet by verbally terrorizing the Game, Oprah Winfrey, Fat Joe, Murder Inc. Records founder Irv Gotti, Nas and Diddy, just to name a few of his more recent targets.

But ask the G-Unit figurehead, who refers to himself in raps as “Ferrari F-50,” about the pressure to deliver another hit album and he momentarily drops his guard. “There’s a shadow of doubt cast on artists between every project,” he says.

“There are people that have seen so much success from me that they’d like to see something negative,” 50 says, earnestly.

Yes, 50 Cent has anticipated the coming backlash but would like everyone to know that predictions of his demise are premature -- and that he is preparing a world-beating follow-up to “The Massacre,” 2005’s second bestselling album, for release in June.

“They’re not saying, ‘Do you think 50 Cent can create a great record?’ Because there’s no doubt about that; I’ve shown nothing but consistency,” says 50. “But they are saying, ‘Do you think he can do it again?’

“My first album has sold 12 million records,” he says. “My second is holding at 9.8 [million]. Which isn’t bad. But I felt I would surpass my first one with my second. I’m tough on myself. At the same time, I got people around me who are such perfectionists: Dr. Dre and Eminem. We start working on this record, I’m not settling for anything less than better than the last time.”

And he sees his place in the celebrity industrial complex clearly.

“In the history of entertainment, people build up entertainers just to tear them down,” 50 says. “It’s tough out here. It’s a lot easier to make it in the NBA than to have a musical career. But I’m in the zone, bay-bee! I ain’t going nowhere.”

Churchgoers sing song’s praises

AT a moment in the pop continuum when album sales and radio play can only hint at how fans consume and respond to music -- when mass appeal has come to be measured by downloads, blog buzz and ringtones -- it’s easy to forget that artists can still score a hit the old-fashioned way: by getting people to sing along.

That’s what happened to Chris Tomlin, the Gospel Music Assn.’s 2006 male vocalist of the year. According to Christian Copyright Licensing International, an organization that tracks and charts copyrighted material being sung at more than 170,000 churches worldwide, the singer’s “How Great Is Our God” came in at No. 1 in February.

Which is to say that more than 30 million people in congregations of various denominations around the world have lifted their voices to sing Tomlin’s guitar-driven, pop-tinged “How Great” each week for the three months leading to Valentine’s Day, the end of the CCLI’s polling period.

“My hope is that all will see how great our God is,” Tomlin said in a recent interview.

You couldn’t pray for better buzz.

A big fight over ‘Female Trouble’

THE trouble with “Female Trouble” began in Amsterdam late last year. There, Hustler magazine cover girl-turned-blues chanteuse Candye Kane recorded an updated version of the song immortalized in a 1974 John Waters movie, also called “Female Trouble” -- one belted out by the writer-director’s then-muse Divine, a morbidly obese drag queen partial to feather boas.

Although Kane says she landed permission to record the song from its composer, Bob Harvey, and was on schedule to include it on her genre-spanning April album “Guitar’d and Feathered,” scatological auteur Waters put the kibosh on her cover; he threatened to sue Kane if she didn’t destroy the masters.

In an e-mail to The Times, Kane explained the agonizing decision to drop “Female Trouble” from her CD. “Mr. Waters is currently suing Nickelodeon television and has way more money than this single mom.... Needless to say, I am very disappointed and disillusioned,” she says. “I was a huge John Waters fan, and now I feel like a fool for worshipping the man.”

chris.lee@latimes.com