Beefs sometimes bring rappers out of lazy ass periods. The beef with Jay-Z really brought Nas back to life, for a time; he then proceded to drop a couple more turds before pissing off the entire industry with HHID (which is pretty good).
Cam is so fucking inconsistant. Usually he's one of the worst rappers out there, but every now and then he comes up with something hot like his verse on Gone by Kanye.
I thought 50's first album had lots of good stuff on it, but the second album was just the same generic shit with worse beats. Overall he's not a good rapper at all, but he's witty as hell. He might be the biggest gangsta rapper of our time but he just isn't up there with Tupac or Biggie. This is partly because he isn't doing much that interesting or new.
When you think about it, the four rappers of the last 10-15 who are considered the greatest - Tupac, Biggie, Nas, and Jay-Z- all used gangsta imagery, but they tackled the subject from different angles that were rather "new" at the time. Tupac examined things more from a tortured, contradictory viewpoint that looked at the social cause and effect aspects of "thug" life. Biggie examined things from a more autobiographical, Scarface-esque angle: I was once a small crook, but now I'm the don of an empire. Nas examined things from the outside in the since that instead of rapping about living the gangsta life, he just talked about what he saw almost like a poet or documentarian would. And finally Jay-Z examined gangsta strictly from a business perspective, one which controlled the streets from far away instead of running them - more Godfather than Scarface.
50 Cent has tried molding all of those different aspects together except for Nas'. To me it comes off as contrived and far too commercial. It's the same with G-Unit; I don't remember anyone dancing to NWA or Geto Boys for the most part. That was raw, hard ass gangsta music, whereas G-Unit/50 Cent is like bubble gum gangsta. Which isn't gangsta at all
