Beef, Part II

  “I would be willing to bet money that we are headed toward another hip-hop assassination.  If this beef continues, one of its key figures will be killed.  And that, I suppose, will sell CDs too.”  Those were the last words I typed on this contraption.  That was last Sunday evening.

  Fortunately, this week’s column isn’t about 50 Cent or The Game being shot and killed by the other.  No, I don’t see that happening any time soon.  That’s because last Wednesday (before my column came out last Thursday), the two called a truce—making me look absolutely foolish.  Sure, it was a pretty press conference.  Lots of hugging and hand-shaking.  Both of the key players opened their checkbooks and handed a fat check over to the Harlem Boys’ Choir.  Between them, they donated more than a quarter of a million dollars.  It was just peachy.  And now the beef between 50 and The Game seems like nothing more than a distant nightmare.  The details are becoming hazy with time, a phantom memory.  Did it ever even happen?  And if so, did we really get caught up in it?

  Of course the truce wasn’t called until 50 had sold 1.4 million copies of his new CD, “The Massacre.”  (The Game’s latest CD, “The Documentary,” sold about 800,000 more copies that week, coming in fourth on the bestseller charts.)  And the beef was dropped so suddenly and amicably—50 Cent with his brotherly arm around The Game—could it have been a publicity stunt?  Did their record label, Interscope Records, put them up to it?  Or, conversely, did it pressure them into this truce?  And if it was all hype, what about the poor guy from The Game’s camp that got shot outside the Hot 97 studios as a result? 

  There are so many questions that remain unanswered.  But I suppose that is to be expected from this volcanic, three-week ordeal that flared like a brushfire then skidded to a halt as quickly as it had begun.  We don’t yet know if The Game is back in G-Unit.  There’s a lot we don’t yet know.  And there’s a lot we probably never will.

  But my wager still stands.  Both 50 and The Game still have their own beefs.  50 Cent is out to get Jadakiss, Ja Rule, Fat Joe, and Nas.  The Game has ongoing beef with Yukmouth from The Luniz.  And if these beefs aren’t called off in similar fashion, there will be blood shed. 

  50 Cent recently released a track called “Piggy Bank” in which he attacks the four rappers named above.  Just last week, Jadakiss responded with a song called “Checkmate,” and it was brutal.  It was reminiscent of 2Pac’s “Hit ‘Em Up,” a vicious attack on The Notorious B.I.G.  Luckily, these attacks have only been lyrical.  So Far.

  But I guess the way I ended last week’s column is still fitting, whether the beef between Fiddy and The Game is alive or dead.  “I would be willing to bet money that we are headed toward another hip-hop assassination.  If this beef continues, one of its key figures will be killed.  And that, I suppose, will sell CDs too.”  

-From Pulse
  March 17, 2005