Friday, May 16, 2003 | 9:01 a.m.
Within an hour of arriving at work on Tuesday, Odyssey Records assistant manager Jermaine Johnson had already sold four 50 Cent CDs at the Las Vegas Boulevard store.
That might not sound unusual for a new release. But those are brisk sales considering the ultra-popular rapper's first disc, "Get Rich or Die Tryin'," has been available for more than three months.
The follow-up, a combination DVD and CD set titled "The New Breed," was released April 15, one full month ago.
"I've sold two of each in the last hour alone," Johnson said. "Everybody's buying them. Even people that I thought would never buy a hip-hop record are buying them: black kids, white kids, old mothers, young mothers, fathers, all of them.
"He's been number one at our store since his album came out."
From his April appearance on the cover of Rolling Stone to his recent stint on "Saturday Night Live," the 26-year-old 50 Cent born Curtis Jackson is music's man of the hour. Only, his hour has already lasted several months.
"Get Rich or Die Tryin' " held the top spot on last week's Billboard 200 album chart for the sixth week, vaulting over Madonna's "American Life" one week after its release before dropping to No. 5 on this week's chart.
"Get Rich" set a new sales record in February, moving more than 872,000 copies in its first five days.
Perhaps most amazingly, leadoff single "In Da Club" remains red hot 19 weeks after its radio debut, charting at No. 6 in the latest Billboard Hot 100 singles rankings. Another song from "Get Rich," "21 Questions," featuring Nate Dogg, is this week's No. 2 single.
Tonight the pre-eminent gangsta rapper will be in da club in Las Vegas. 50 Cent performs at 6:30 at the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay, a highly anticipated show that sold out long ago -- tickets were gone in two weeks.
"If you're adding up 50 Cent, we're up to about $2.50 now," joked KWID 101.9-FM (Wild 102) program director "Jammer," who declined to divulge his real name. "Four of our top five requested songs right now are his."
That quartet doesn't even include "In Da Club" or 50 Cent's first hit single, "Wanksta," which appeared on last year's "8 Mile" soundtrack.
Those tracks are still in frequent rotation on Wild 102, but most calls are coming in for some of the rap star's other cuts: "Hail Mary" and "The Realist" from 50's early bootleg mixtapes, "21 Questions" off "Get Rich" and "Magic Stick," a Lil' Kim song featuring 50 Cent.
"Even though people still love 'In Da Club,' and we still spin it about 50 times a week, they're kind of moving on," Jammer said. "From (age) 12 to 49, everybody's calling for him. I got a call today from a woman born in 1955."
As the rest of the music industry struggles to combat an economic downturn and the availability of free Internet downloads, 50 Cent continues to prove a new act can still sell millions of records.
Just how does he do it? Is it strictly the music? Are his rhymes so far superior to those of his hip-hop counterparts? Or do his rhythms have catchier tempos?
Are fans attracted to his controversial past, which includes time spent dealing crack cocaine, several jail terms and a now-legendary incident in which an assassin peppered him with nine bullets in an unsuccessful attempt on his life?
Or can 50 Cent's success be traced to his associations with popular rappers and producers Dr. Dre and Eminem, two household names in the hip-hop world?
DJ Revise, an employee at Hiphopsite.com Records & CDs on Maryland Parkway, thinks it's a combination of the three.
"He has catchy rhymes that stick in your head. Eminem and Dr. Dre had a huge part in it," DJ Revise said. "And I think everyone wants to think they would like to live that life, as hard as it seems."
The legend of 50 Cent dates to the late 1990s. Based in his hometown of Queens, N.Y., the rapper released a string of underground singles calling out some of the rap world's biggest names, including Jay-Z, Master P and the Wu-Tang Clan's Ghostface Killah, Raekwon and RZA.
On the verge of releasing his major-label debut on Columbia Records, 50 Cent's budding music career was derailed on May 24, 2000, in New York City when a gunman shot him nine times at close range.
Though 50 walked away from the assault -- making him an even more mythical figure in rap circles -- Columbia immediately dropped him from its label. He returned to the underground scene, producing several mixtapes that continued his verbal assault on the genre's biggest stars.
Eminem took notice, eventually signing 50 to his own Shady Records label last year in a joint deal with Dr. Dre's Aftermath Entertainment and major label Interscope. Eminem produced (and raps) on two tracks on "Get Rich," while Dr. Dre produced six others.
"Dr. Dre was the main push for that album," DJ Revise said. "From the front, it was Eminem, but behind the scenes it was Dre."
Dre's production turned such songs as "In Da Club" into danceable numbers popular among club-goers as well as hip-hop fans.
The attempt on 50's life -- specifically, a bullet fired through his mouth -- may have also played a part in his musical success, turning his vocal delivery into one of the genre's most recognizable.
"There's a different sound now when I talk, 'cause of the air around the (missing) tooth," 50 Cent told Rolling Stone in a recent interview. "Gettin' shot just totally fixed my instrument."
The rapper's notorious background is also omnipresent in his music, from the sound of gunfire at the start of "Many Men (Wish Death)" to his frequent use of gangsta imagery in his lyrics.
"If he says he's gonna pop you, you think he might," Eminem told Rolling Stone. "Kids wanna see a guy that got shot that many times and lived. There's a whole mystique about him, but at the same, the kids that are goin' to the shows are a little bit intimidated by him. Maybe not all, but most.
"He's definitely out there. And that's me sayin' that."
In the Rolling Stone interview, 50 offered this take: "I think kids like me like the (expletive) bad guy in a film. People love the bad guy. I watch movies all the time and root for the bad guy and turn it off before it ends because the bad guy dies.
"It's cinematic law: The bad guy has to die. But sometimes the bad guy gets a record deal and becomes a superstar like 50."
Whatever the formula, it has all added up to one of the most successful starts in recent music history for the man known as 50 Cent. He's so popular that Johnson -- a devoted fan -- wasn't even able to secure a ticket for tonight's show before it sold out.
But if you miss out tonight, don't fret. 50 will be back July 27, for Def Jam Records' "Roc the Mic' show" at the Thomas & Mack Center, along with Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z, Busta Rhymes, Sean Paul, Missy Elliott and Lil' Mo, another concert likely to attract hordes of new hip-hop converts.
"Hardcore hip-hop is not underground anymore," Jammer said. "It has really moved to the center. It's mainstream pop, whereas alternative music has moved away from the center."
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