On sale, 50 Cent!

I noticed that one of my top tracks for the past week (according to my handy little Last.fm widget to the right) is "Corner Bodega" by 50 Cent, a great riding song btw. Which led me to the thought, Remember when 50 Cent used to be cool? Like, right when he first started getting mainstream attention in 2000. At the lunch table in high school all everyone would talk about is how 50's that new hotness, how his mixtapes are pure fire, and how dope his then-album was. He's mad corny now, like a caricature of his former multiple gunshot wound, street warrior self, amirite?

Now he does press junkets with Bette Midler (major confused face here, what do these fools have in common?):

And tries to drum up interest in himself by starting beefs with rappers who are as popular now as he USED to be:

Feud w. The Game

Feud w. Rick Ross

Feud w. Lil Wayne

Let's not forget the infamous Kanye vs. 50 album sales beef (don't rappers see we're all on to the whole "fake beef" thing? IT'S SO PLAYED OUT)

When I was in NYC a couple summers ago, I asked this guy from Queens what he thought of 50. He said almost no one in the community respects him anymore, that once he got famous, he ditched his old neighborhood and got straight corny with it. In other words, he "sold out."

Yeah, go figure ::rolls eyes::

So many artists eventually sell out: Black Eyed Peas pre-Fergie; Missy Elliott--remember when she tried to capitalize off of that one really hot album she had, Miss E... So Addictive, by releasing two more really sh*tty albums right after? Yeah, FAIL; Ja Rule; Nelly. OMG there are SO many. And definitely not just in hip hop either. What musical sellouts are you guys still listening to, even if it's just their one hot song?

(PLEASE don't say Drake... I have the feeling with all this hype, he's gonna pull a "50" reeeeal soon. Which brings me to another thing that really grinds my gears: when an artist I knew about and listened to for ABOUT A YEAR before he/she blows up goes mainstream (remember when that song Drizzy did with Trey Songz a while back, "Replacement Girl," dropped? Hotness. Also totally annoying, when MIA's song "Paper Planes" got popularized by that Pineapple Express movie. Hello losers, that song was out for a good year and a half before it blew up AGAIN).