Ranking G-Unit's Albums From Worst To Best

We ranked G-Unit's albums, from the very worst to the very best

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G-Unit was a hell of a movement—really, an inferno insomuch as 50 Cent was fiery and devilish, with incendiary, all-consuming hype. Confronted with 50's debut singles "In Da Club" and "Wanksta" in 2003, Jay Z threw up his hands, as Roc-A-Fella took a backseat to the year. Ja Rule and Irv Gotti's Murda Inc. fumbled, stumbled, crashed. The Ruff Ryders disintegrated. Violator floundered.

For a few tumultuous, glorious years, 50 Cent, Lloyd Banks, Tony Yayo, Young Buck, and Game were the tallest men standing. (Not that we loved Dipset any less.)

From G-Unit’s false-but-wonderful starts on Power of the Dollar and 50 Cent Is the Future, to superstardom, to regional expansion and roster conflict, and then of course decline. In the course of all that, the G-Unit crew released sixteen proper albums that we've ranked for posterity.

As for the Unit's prolific mixtape run: well, that's (perhaps) another post, for another day. 

RELATED: Video: 50 Cent Explains Every "Get Rich or Die Tryin'" Track
RELATED: The Making Of The Game's "The Documentary"

16. 50 Cent, Animal Ambition (2014)

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I'll say this much for it: all evidence of a creative deficit here can, and will, be swept under the rug, never to be heard again once G-Unit drops a new full-length project. It's not quite a bad album, just an unnecessary one. Minimal blood, none of the nerve, and the dimest of 50's wit. None of the grit. None of the gusto. A buff, pristine tycoon made this album. Obviously. —Justin Charity

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15. Lloyd Banks, Rotten Apple (2006)

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Despite Game's single-driven success with "One Blood" and "Wouldn't Get Far," G-Unit proper started flagging in 2006, with few exciting releases and a penchant for drama before music. For a while there, it seemed like Banks was the only G-Unit artists with any hunger in his gut. "Cake" notwithstanding, however, Rotten is as aggressive as it is charmless, with no tracks as turn-up friendly as "I'm So Fly," "On Fire," or "So Seductive." The monotony of Rotten Apple's second half is peak oversaturation of the G-Unit formula, even if tracks like "Hands Up," "Survival," and "Gilmore's" do salvage that familiar energy in spots. Twenty points deducted for gratuitous deployment of Musiq Soulchild on "Addicted." Who'd have ever expected, much less demanded, a G-Unit album featuring both Keri Hilson and Rakim?—Justin Charity 

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14. Mobb Deep, Blood Money (2006)

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When it was announced that Mobb Deep had signed with G-Unit, the question arose: How would the gritty, raw, and often bleak duo from Queensbridge mesh with the shimmery, engineered, and self-celebratory demeanor of G-Unit? Unfortunately, the answer was: forgettably.

Don't get it twisted, Blood Money has decent moments. It's difficult not to nod your head to the production across the album (with Havoc taking on the majority of titles, but less than his typical share). Tracks like "Put 'Em In Their Place," "Day Dreamin'," and "Pearly Gates" stand out as notable offerings, while others come off as average. Havoc and Prodigy's visceral, unprocessed, hood-charm feels uprooted and their authority a bit diminished by the clear intention to construct records that coincide with the Unit's framework. Resulting in a collection of songs that feel somewhere between G-Unit junior varsity and a diet Mobb Deep, that were ultimately eclipsed by the southern takeover.

As P calls out, "Curtis 'Billion Dollar Budget' Jackson. Go 'head be mad at that man, he the one made us rich." At least we know who to point the finger at. —Brandon Jenkins 

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13. Tony Yayo, Thoughts of a Predicate Felon (2005)

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Given his famous incarceration, the expectations of Tony Yayo's debut were relatively slim. Not that we weren't checking for Yayo, but we weren't quite pulling for him, "Free Yayo" proto-hashtags aside. So you can't say Predicate Felon flopped, really. It's just that the slick/shit balance that blessed 50 never quite leveled with Yayo's persona—"So Seductive" (a certified banger, to be sure) and "Curious" drove Felon in contradiction of his caricature as the eternally incarcerated hypeman. By this point in G-Unit's ascent, newcomers Young Buck and Game were immediately defined as the corn-bred thug maniac and the introverted shooter, respectively. Whereas we never got to know Tony Yayo. —Justin Charity 

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12. Lloyd Banks, The Hunger for More 2 (2010)

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The G-Unit flag that waved so mightily in the 2000s was at half-staff by the end of the decade. 50 Cent's musical success and relevance was on a downslope, Young Buck and Game were ceremoniously removed from the picture, and Tony Yayo was, well, Tony Yayo. Which meant Lloyd Banks, G-Unit's silent assassin, was left in a discomforting position. The self-proclaimed Punchline King was reeling from a sophomore slump, as well as being dropped from Interscope. So his decision to title his third release as a sequel to his debut album felt more like a desperation move than a novelty nod to its predecessor.

If The Hunger for More was Banks' crowning solo achievement and Rotten Apple the result of lack of execution, H.F.M.2. was somewhere in between. The project boasts one of Banks' most memorable records to date, "Beamer, Benz, or Bentley," a tricked-out banger. The slimmed down G-Unit roster also allowed Banks to call upon outside assistance, giving way to formidable guest spots from Pusha T ("Home Sweet Home"), Raekwon ("Sooner or Later"), and Styles P ("Unexplainable"). This isn't to say his crew didn't come through in the clutch too. "Take 'Em to War," Banks' album-opening collaboration with Yayo, delivered a menacing one-two punch, while "Payback" was punctuated by 50's piercing growl of a hook.

Lloyd Banks and H.F.M.2. falter where fans feared most, and that's his inability to carry a full-length project. "Start It Up" seemed like a great lineup in theory, but the actual result of Banks, Kanye West, Fabolous, Swizz Beatz, and Ryan Leslie teaming up together came off like a bad My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy throwaway. "So Forgetful" was great, but mainly because of Leslie's slick contributions—Banks simply disappears. The Akon-assisted "Celebrity" offers a trite premise and an even worse performance. And try as he might on tracks like "Any Girl" and "I Don't Deserve You," the Queens rapper could never be a bankable artist and lady killer like his G-Unit general.

If there's one thing we learned from H.F.M.2., it's that sequels tend to disappoint. But they're not as bad as spoiled fruit. —Edwin Ortiz

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11. G-Unit, Terminate On Sight (2008)

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Five years after Beg For Mercy, the stars had aligned once more for a G-Unit album. They weren't the untouchable force they were when they debuted, but this go-around was an attempt to punch back at the competition. What resulted was a hard G-Unit album. It may not have been in tune with the time, and hadn't necessarily progressed artistically from its predecessor, but it harkened back to what G-Unit fans liked and wanted: their signature no-bullshit toughness. The rappers, individually, had not wavered in terms of skill. Plus, this time we got to hear some Yayo verses.

Gritty raps on well-selected beats made Terminate On Sight an enjoyable record from front to back. What had been compromised at the time, if anything, was their group aesthetic. 50 was no longer the king, and his cohorts had all released solo albums. T.O.S.'s success lied in its resonance with fans who wanted more of the same. The album is full of good to great songs ("You So Tough" and "Piano Man" come to mind), but nothing had the staying power of, say, "Poppin' The Thangs." —Alex Russell

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10. 50 Cent, Curtis (2007)

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Not nearly as disappointing as the notorious sales contrast with Kanye would suggest, alas, Curtis was the watershed moment when 50 Cent's hype and persona overtook him. "Ayo Technology" may have gotten decent traction as a Timberlake/Timbaland collabo, all the rage in the mid '00s, but this approach nearly muted the grit and bombast that had previously given 50 a pass for otherwise thriving by club beats and rapsung radio hooks. Still, almost secretly, the gangsta bangers overwhelm the occasional pop pandering; no, you can't sweat "I Get Money," or even the R&B-assisted "Fire" and "All of Me." Also, look: "Amusement Park" wasn't bad, not at all; though it may well have been the moment when heads snapped out of it, only to realize that 50 Cent had been Ja Rule all along. —Justin Charity 

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9. G-Unit, Get Rich or Die Tryin' Soundtrack (2005)

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A G-Unit album as film soundtrack—alright, I'll take it. Luckily, this wasn't just a compilation project, but a legit new release with a few legit hits. If it took a $40 million vanity blockbuster to give us "Window Shopper," so be it. This here's a bona fide G-Unit album, and so, of course, it's more gangsta than playboy, more slick than seductive, so much so that Olivia got barely a chorus in edgewise; and then "Best Friend" is seventeen tracks deep, a mere bonus track.

Two years after Beg for Mercy, G-Unit still had that crew magic, yet to dispel or further disband. (Bye, Game.) —Justin Charity

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8. 50 Cent, Before I Self-Destruct (2009)

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By 2009, 50 Cent's moment had passed. He had already suffered an embarrassing loss in 2007 to Kanye West when Graduation handily outsold 50's Curtis. But that only told half the story. Kanye didn't just make a better album (50 admitted as much in a recent GQ profile) but made 50's sound feel old and outdated—like a superstar athlete who ruined his knees and just didn't have the same lift anymore. By '09, all the seeds of Kanye's influence began to blossom as rappers like J. Cole and Drake began their ascent, creating a new paradigm in rap that left gangsta rap in the dust. Yet, even hobbled, 50 was still kicking that "aggressive content" as a reminder that street rap would always have a place in hip-hop.

Anyone who has listened to rap over the past few years became hip to 50's antics. 50's attempts to bait Jay Z into a feud felt desperate which left a frustrated 50 to rhyme, "Jay's a big man, he's too big to respond." But 50 was still at his most entertaining when he was being disrespectful and bringing "Death To His Enemies." Besides goading Jay, 50 takes time to air out real life friends turned foes like Young Buck, The Game, and on multiple occasions, his baby momma.

To top it off, 50's rapping on here is a marked improvement from many of Curtis' mailed in bars. On the aforementioned "Death To My Enemies" he raps, "That 4-30 Spider, carbon fiber/And my dog is like Al-Qaeda natural fighter/Rapid fire, you're sweet like apple cider/The Mack'll fire, mask like Michael Myers." Even when he's revisited tired topics of guns and drug dealing, 50 sounds more invigorated than ever before, so much so that even when he's rapping about being "so laid back" he's growling. Meanwhile, on songs like "Days Went By," he manages to tell previously unheard autobiographical tales from his horrid childhood (the story of him pistol whipping his uncle for smoking his stash is unforgettable) when it seemed like he told every story he could possibly tell already.

The album isn't without its missteps; "I Got Swag" shouldn't have happened, "Get It Hot" did anything but, and "Baby By Me" wasn't the right single for an album that was meant to be a back-to-basics course correction. And after Eminem and Dr. Dre slowly stepped away, 50 didn't have any producers to center his sound. But when his songs did work, they proved that even if 50 had already self destructed and was too myopic to see it, he could still pick up the pieces and make weight. —Insanul Ahmed

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7. Lloyd Banks, The Hunger for More (2004)

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Those of us who were recruited to G-Unit's fanbase via their earliest mixtape grind had to have been wondering what would come of Banks and Yayo. With the eventual recruitment of UTP's Young Buck and Dr. Dre's protege Game, G-Unit was suddenly a crowded roster. Banks got the first solo release date following 50 Cent's debut. "On Fire" was the very first hint that that the hype could sustain not just 50 but the whole team; and while "I'm So Fly" is a hook clearly inspired by 50, the rasp and charisma is all Banks. —Justin Charity

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6. Young Buck, Buck the World (2007)

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Even before the infamous taped conversation, Young Buck developed a reputation as the most emotional member of G-Unit. But emotion isn’t a bad thing for an artist—just ask Drake. On his sophomore album, Buck The World, the Nashville native tapped into the full spectrum of feelings without ever once wavering from the G-Unit model of gangsta rap. This was the case with “Slow Ya Roll,” an unexpected collaboration with Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington that offered a glimpse into the consequences of street life.

Production on Buck The World was helmed by an all-star cast that included Dr. Dre, Jazze Pha, Polow Da Don, Lil Jon, and Eminem. Always a soldier for the Unit, Buck included two diss songs towards Cam’Ron: “Hold On” and the hidden outro “Funeral Music,” which was a 50 Cent solo song. But what defines this album, and Buck’s career as a whole, is it’s unwavering intensity. This is encapsulated in “Lose My Mind,” a song that will send chills down your spine, not only because of what he is saying, but also his unconventional screamo delivery.

Buck The World was sandwiched in-between some of G-Unit’s worst material, such as Blood Money, The Rotten Apple, and Curtis, but it stands as one of the lone bright spots in the post-Massacre era. —Dharmic X 

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5. G-Unit, Beg for Mercy (2003)

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Beg For Mercy, as its title suggests, was G-Unit's twisting the bayonet. 50 had just overwhelmed the rap game as a solo artist, and he had opened the door for his right- and left-hand men. Given the degree of 50's success (Get Rich Or Die Tryin' had been released nine months prior), the trio could have phoned this one in and had no problem with sales. What resulted was a very well-executed group aesthetic with a gang of classic songs, maybe even a classic album. 50 was rapping with the relaxed composure of someone who knew he had the game in his palm, while Banks and Buck came with the hunger.

The formula for a Beg For Mercy song was to take one of many perfect beats (the whole album was sonically reminiscent of The Chronic: 2001 to me, with a crispness that Dre had perfected just a couple years prior, despite only having a couple of actual Dre beats) they were provided with, then permute the order of the rappers' verses in some way. 50 got the lead verse on most songs; Buck and Banks both got a solo track.

As a group album, it checked all the boxes. It had hit street records ("Poppin' Them Thangs"), a song for the ladies ("Wanna Get To Know You"), and many opportunities to accentuate the styles of each individual member ("Footprints," for example, is one of Young Buck's best, supported by an insane 50 hook). There was no filler. It can still be brought out today and listened to front to back. 50 was able to bring out the best in his cohorts, it seemed. Young Buck's "Stunt 101" verse was probably the most memorable ("The ice in my teeth keep the Cristal cold!"), probably because of the way that 50's and Banks' verses had set him up. Banks was the quieter, gruff, clever one, 50 was the laughing, shit-talking mastermind, and Buck was the rowdy, soulful one—and it came together beautifully.

Ten years later, I listen to Beg For Mercy more than any other G-Unit album (it doesn't have tracks that became undeniably corny like, say, "Candy Shop"), and I'll still put on "Wanna Get To Know You" any time I'm given the aux cable at a party. —Alex Russell

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4. 50 Cent, The Massacre (2005)

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In a lot of ways, 50 Cent's The Massacre is the beginning of the end for 50 Cent and G-Unit as a whole. It features all the missteps that would soon either undermine or undo 50's empire; a misguided pop effort that alienated too many core fans yet still resulted in a No. 1 hit ("Candy Shop"), an overzealous effort to use beef as a marketing ploy ("Piggy Bank"), and the use of commercial performance to justify all antics (selling 1.14 million copies in a short week). But what really undid this album is 50's hubris. Coming off Get Rich or Die Tryin' he was absolutely convinced that he'd never run out of hits because he could just go to the studio and whip up some more. So much so he essentially gave away the first draft of The Massacre to his then protege, The Game, for his debut, The Documentary.

Take a moment to consider how much better The Massacre would have been if you instead had the six songs 50 would later claim he wrote for Game, including "Hate It or Love It" and "How We Do."

And yet, 50 had all the reason in the world be confident. The Massacre still featured some of the best rap music of not just 50's career, but of that era of rap period. Yes, the album was overindulgent with a jampacked lineup of 22 tracks that ran 73 minutes. But it still featured songs like "In My Hood," "This Is 50," and "Ski Mask Way." The Vivica A. Fox diss on "Get In My Car" ("Went out with Vivica, I thought I was onto something/But then the next week, nah man, it was nothing") alone made the album's price of admission worth it. Songs like "I'm Supposed to Die Tonight" and "Gunz Come Out" may have revisited familiar topics, but that doesn't mean they did it without flair.

But still, much like with Ja Rule, the fickle nature of rap fans will build you up only to bring you down. And The Massacre marked the moment when 50 went from folk hero turned global rap star, to the guy on top everyone wanted to fall. 50 sensed as much. On "Ryder Music" he lamented, "The shit journalist write about me, get me confused/Have me feeling like the heavyweight champ when he lose." That'll happen when you try to follow up an undeniable classic with a mixed bag of bangers. But you can't count it as a loss when you're still the champ. —Insanul Ahmed 

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3. Young Buck, Straight Outta Cashville (2004)

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"In the street, the consensus is that Buck's album is better than Banks's," said 50 Cent, in a 2005 interview with VIBE, about Young Buck and Lloyd Banks' debut albums. Yup, even the G-Unit general knew Young Buck had somehow usurped the Punchline King as the second best in the crew. Few knew what to make of Buck when he first started rolling with G-Unit. He made an appearance on "Blood Hound" off 50 Cent's Get Rich but it wasn't enough to establish him. He did that on the Unit's Beg For Mercy where he was able to step in and play as Tony Yayo's replacement while Yayo served time. He quickly immortalized himself in the collective conscious of rap listeners everywhere when he claimed, on G-Unit's "Stunt 101," "The ice in my mouth keep the Cristal cold." But the appeal of his debut album, Straight Outta Cashville, wasn't the flashiness, it was the hunger and menace that boomed out of Buck's voice.

Banks and 50 were slick with their words, two cool customers who'd sooner mumble their verses than raise their voice. But Buck was blatant and brutal. "Committed to the block, fuck these niggas, fuck the cops/Fuck these bitches, fuck ya chain, fuck ya car, fuck ya watch," he spewed on "Prices On My Head." Straight Outta Cashville was still a slick record with all the G-Unit polish of big beats; Lil Jon finding the perfect junction of twang and crunk on "Shorty Wanna Ride," Needlz's timely sample of Nancy Sinatra's "Bang, Bang" right after Quentin Tarantino used it in Kill Bill, and DJ Paul and Juicy J's pulsating "Stomp." And the raps were all still the typical G-Unit gun talk, drug dealing, and a body count to match the Iraq war, where every action left you wondering, "What's worse? Waking up in the pen, or sleeping up under the dirt?" But what made it special was Buck's exuberance that proved that even as G-Unit took over the world, it still had a home in the Dirty South. —Insanul Ahmed

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2. Game, The Documentary (2005)

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If 50 Cent's debut was a project propelled by a villain's charisma and the gulliest of origin stories, we must admit that Game, in contrast, was just riding the beats. With a soundscape dominated by Dr. Dre, Just Blaze, and Kanye West, The Documentary is a millennial blend of soul meta-samples, synth strings, tenor-sung hooks. This one tape alone hosts many of 2005's most memorable beats; the minimal, addictive synth cadence of "How We Do," the soul hypnosis of "Hate It Or Love It," and the godly stomps of "Higher."

The Documentary was everything a rap album could've been in 2005: a beatmaker dream team, one of the last great D'Angelo choruses, as well as Nate Dogg's last hurrah. (Plus, a Detox teaser). And while Dre receives all due props from Game, "No More Fun and Games" and "Church for Thugs" tally among the best work of Just Blaze's career. From producers, to guests, to the songwriters, The Documentary was a collaborative effort, and it's no worse for that fact. For every one of 50's godsend hooks, Game delivered the wordplay and studio bombast that makes "Westside Story" such an impressive foray; that makes "Runnin'" an all-coast banger despite its definitive L.A. squeal; that makes "Where I'm From" a worthy preservation of Nate Dogg's charisma, as one of the last major projects of his career.

So the story goes: 50 donated a few of The Documentary's biggest hooks and beats previous reserved for The Massacre. "He told VIBE [that] Dre was gon leave me on the shelf; so he gave me all his hits," Game rapped in 2006. "You shoulda kept em for yourself." And yet, Game did every single one of those beats justice. —Justin Charity

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1. 50 Cent, Get Rich Or Die Tryin' (2003)

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In hip-hop's grand retrospect, we take 50 Cent more seriously than we take, say, Nelly. As if Nelly was just a hitboy wonder of 2000, whereas 50 Cent was a #realrap icon, a credible promise of lyricism and violence, both at once. Yet in 2003, the appeal of "In Da Club" was no less immediate, and no more complex or high-brow than "Country Grammar," or than most of Ja Rule's contemporary hits, for that matter. Yet neither Nelly nor Ja nor even DMX ever made an album quite like Get Rich Or Die Tryin'.

What set 50 Cent's debut apart, then, wasn't just the singles, or all the beef and preemptive drama. With the Wu in decline and the Ruff Ryders in disarray, 50 Cent was a livid reanimation of New York City, after a tumultuous decade that snatched the Notorious B.I.G., Big Pun, and Big L from this world. Hip-hop had grown wider, and flatter. Jay Z studied regional diplomacy. Ja Rule mastered the pop-rap crossover. 50 Cent would go on to do both, with his debut album somehow managing to balance the pop serenity of "21 Questions" and "P.I.M.P." with the unfiltered menace of "Heat," "What Up Gangsta," and "Don't Push Me." That 50 sings (rather than raps) the hooks on "Many Men," "Back Down," "Gotta Make It to Heaven," and "Patiently Waiting" suggests that 50 Cent knew from jump that a rapsung hook don't make you no bitch.

If you sit and consider the album's full title as mission statement—"Get rich, or die trying."—it's uncanny how, after having survived both stretcher and shelf, 50 Cent is nothing but charismatic, relaxed, and occasionally too cool for his own magnum opus. With boundless dexterity, he grins through whole verses, entire songs, e.g., "Like My Style," where he launches: "On ya mark, get set, let's go, switch the flow;/ Teach ya how to turn yayo into dough;/the original Don Dada: nobody bomb harder;/ya heard what I said boy, I'm hot! I'm hot!" As if his skating the dust and goring the bull was preordained, by Satanic rite: he's unconquerable. "You ain't got to tell me [that] you feeling this shit," 50 Cent raps on "Gotta Make It to Heaven," the album's outro. "I hear what I'm saying, I know I'm killing this shit."

Despite the album's panning wide—the entire G-Unit's in the house, plus peak Eminem, plus free agent Young Buck—50 is Get Rich's prevailing, bullying force, no matter the beat or feature. Eminem delivers a signature assist on "Patiently Waiting," yet it's 100 percent 50's track, confirmed by the seething rage of that hook and the bleak severity of 50's songwriting: "I'm innocent in my head, like a baby born dead;/Destination: heaven. Sit and politic with passengers from 9/11." On "Heat," what's the more worrisome excess: the looped gunshot as punctuation of the church organ beat? or 50's bragging, "I don't care if I get caught; the D.A. can play this motherfucking tape in court"?

From "How to Rob," to "Life's On the Line," and then eventually "Wanksta" and "Back Down"—these were songs as much as they were updates on the life and drama of Curtis Jackson.

There are few rap albums that have so entirely, inescapably swarmed radio play and DJ rotation for nearly a year. If The Massacre was the first hint of 50's going overboard, and Curtis was when the captain sank, Get Rich Or Die Tryin' was the departure so flawless that not a single one of its lead singles has lost its sheen in the decade since. ("Candy Shop," not so much.) Breakout singles and disses aside, Get Rich or Die Tryin' is an album as bold as its mogul maestro, a man who teased the reaper, then teased his rivals, snickering as rap came crashing down around him. The year was 2003, and 50 Cent was invincible. —Justin Charity

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