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How Canada deals with rapper 50 Cent

November 25, 2005 | Globe and Mail | Editorial

American "gangsta" rapper 50 Cent, a.k.a. Curtis Jackson, is scheduled to play a series of concert dates in Canada beginning Dec. 3. Liberal MP Dan McTeague wants federal Immigration Minister Joe Volpe to bar his entry on the grounds that the performer's lyrics and lifestyle promote gang violence. In Toronto, a city still reeling from a recent wave of gang-related murder and mayhem, such a suggestion might readily find a sympathetic audience. Indeed, it might be applauded in other communities as well.

On any number of grounds, however, it's still a regrettable idea.

It's true that Mr. Jackson is unlikely to win many nominations for citizen of the year. Raised by a single mother in Queens, N.Y, Fiddy (as he known to his legions of acolytes) was introduced to the nether worlds of crime and drugs early on. He was arrested on felony drug charges -- for dealing crack -- in 1994, at 19, and eventually served seven months in jail. It is this prior criminal record that would allow Mr. Volpe to deny him entry.

In the thug-ridden neighbourhoods of hip hop, Mr. Jackson seems to show a natural talent for making enemies. In 2000, he was wounded three times in an apparent dispute over drugs, said to involve drug lord Kenneth (Supreme) McGriff. He has also been embroiled in controversies of various sorts with a dozen separate rap artists. This year, gunshots were fired at a New York radio station where Fiddy was an on-air guest, after he summarily dropped another rapper (The Game, né Jayceon Taylor) from his label.

Moreover, whatever the merits of his music, there is no doubt that 50 Cent's lyrics glorify a culture inimical to the values of civil society. One random and relatively tame example (sensitive readers should skip the rest of this paragraph): "I got a itchy itchy trigger finger, nigga its a killa in me not to spray that shit I got enough ammo shots to blow I up a hole in every mothafucka out this bitch . . ." Or another sample: "9 Millimeter Ruger 16 shots, hollow points will go through ya and this? this here? this is a 12 gauge Mossburg kid, two shots and you can wet like half a block this shit here gets my dick hard, it's a Calicko, it holds a Hundred shots if you can't kill your beef with this you need to stop."

Rodgers and Hart, it ain't.

Like other miscreants before him, Mr. Jackson has been co-opted by the very capitalist ethic he purports to despise. He's now a full-throttle entrepreneur, having expanded his burgeoning $100-million empire from rap (an estimated 20 million albums sold) to clothing (Reebok shoes), movies (Get Rich or Die Tryin'), vitamin-enriched water and video games (Bulletproof, which landed in stores this week).

But if Mr. McTeague is correct to decry the mesmerizing effect a gun-toting role model like 50 Cent may have on many young men, his proposed solution is wrong. Why ban his personal appearances when his albums are easily available from music stores and the Internet? Why ban only him and none of dozens of other rap artists whose lyrics and lifestyles are equally noxious, full of violence and degrading to women?

Although many youths may lionize Mr. Jackson, and even seek to emulate him, the tragic propensity of gang-affiliated young men to kill each other for a wayward glance or an offhand remark surely has deeper roots than one gun-fixated rapper's percussion-heavy, monotonic grunting about drugs and sex. Try growing up fatherless, often in poverty, in virtual ghettos, without prospects for education or decent jobs.

We may properly disdain the values and subculture that is celebrated in what passes for 50 Cent's music. We may lament his deleterious influence on the young. There is excellent cause for people to boycott his show and his products, and to urge others to do so. But whatever the degree of toxicity in his act, a free and democratic society must, with the exception of direct incitement to violence, tolerate the expression of ideas it finds objectionable. To bar entry to Curtis Jackson would be an unfortunate step.



last updated august 2012