Stunt With G-G-G-G-G G-Unit!
by Josh McClellan
Some people hate them, some love them. Some believe that 50 Cent
is retarded (note that few people step up to refute this. okay, only i think
he's retarded, and i'm probably wrong, but i digress...) but no one denies that
G-Unit is THE hottest thing in hip hop. And while you'd be inclined to thank
Eminem for this musical phenom, let's go back a little further, eh? Check this:
Eazy E begat NWA
NWA Begat Dr. Dre and Ice Cube
Ice Cube Begat West Side Connection
Dr. Dre Begate Snoop Dogg, and later, Eminem
Snoop Dogg Begat 213
Eminem Begat D-12, but no one cared, so
Eminem Begat 50 Cent and then
50 Cent Begat G-Unit, which Begat Lloyd Banks, Young Buck, and Tony Yayo
I guess my point is that Eazy E got AIDS from Freddie Mercury... no wait, that's
an Anal Cunt song. Maybe my point is that 50 Cent has true street cred because
he's been shot nine times. Regardless, now that we've traced the lineage of
G-Unit, let's take a closer look at the group and what they've brought us:
50 came out of the gate first, and to be honest, i didn't like him. Wanksta
is a rotten song with some of the stupidest flow i've ever heard, and while
In Da Club has a nice beat, i just never got into it. However, Cent won me over
with P.I.M.P., a vaguely carribean flavored ditty about not needing all the
Pimp accessories to do the job right. And, to boot, he introduced the world
to the G-Mix!
Once fans were primed, G-Unit launched a full on assault with Stunt 101, a remarkably
catchy song with the kind of hook you'd kill for (the beat, ironically, came
from D-12's Konniva at a point in time when D-12 looked like it was on the way
out, but that's an article i'm not interested in writing) followed by Poppin
Them Thangs. which sounds suspiciously like REM's How the West Was Won and Where
It Got Us. Then they slowed it down for the smooth jam with Joe, I Wanna Be
Your Lover, or something like that. I never listened to it. As summer rolled
around, it was time for the one-two punch of:
Lloyd Banks and Young Buck - I'm going to get this out of the way right now,
i don't really care about Young Buck, so if you're a fan of his, ummm, i guess
reread this article up to this point, cos i've got nothing for ya. Clearly the
breakout star of G-Unit is Lloyd Banks. He could never release another single
in his career and On Fire would still be a classic. Sure, his delivery is only
slightly more engaged than Mase, and it's not always clear if he was awake when
the song was recorded, but Banks is the man. Were it not for his verse in Poppin
Them Thangs, i may have never made this shocking discovery: "Hell yeah
I Fuck Fans/Guess what, your favorite rapper does too" and now i'll never
be able to look at Skee-Lo the same way, I'm afraid.
Speaking of Skee-Lo, whatever happened to that virtuoso of hip hop? He was after
all the second hottest short rapper of his day (behind Bushwack Bill, naturally)
and I Wish does misrepresent what the man's all about. Really. Go get his cd
and listen to every other song on the album. See how proud of himself he is?
See how AWESOME Skee-Lo tells you he is? Listen to Skee-Lo compare himself to
the menu at McDonald's. (no, i'm not kidding)
I guess at some point we all have to say to ourselves:
Skee-Lo, come back! We need you!!!!!!