From Pieces to Weight: Once Upon a Time in Southside Queens
From Pieces to Weight: Once Upon a Time in Southside QueensBy 50 Cent
MTV/Pocket Books, $23
When 50 Cent first arrived, you had to wonder how long the Queens rapper would be around to enjoy fame—he seemed that crazy. A few years later, 50 offers himself as a shrewd businessman looking to grow his hustle into a pop empire. Enter that reliable, readymade image-softener, the celebrity autobiography.
Replete with nature-of-my-environment pathos, steely-eyed epiphanies (“No piece of pussy was worth getting jumped over”) and tangential soliloquies about subjects like the history of cocaine, 50’s tale is sharp and surprisingly funny. Despite the starkness of his teens, when he’d already forsaken school for drug-dealing, 50’s cruel wit and eye for detail overshadow his puppy-eyed plays for sympathy. The first half moves briskly through gripping accounts of neighborhood casualties and formative tussles. When he accidentally ends up in rehab, firsthand contact with the power of addiction leave him inspired…to be a better dealer. Once he survives the infamous attack, details are compressed and the pace speeds up: He forsakes drug-dealing; G-Unit—named after Damon Albarn’s Gorillaz, it turns out—comes together; Eminem arrives; and suddenly he’s a multimedia superstar, prepping for the movie adaptation of his life’s story. More proof that you can’t buy street cred, but you sure can sell it, over and over.
