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Stateside results from the much-hyped Kanye West/50 Cent album sales showdown will be released on Wednesday, with Kanye in the lead at this point and Fiddy looking like he might need to consider a career outside music (if he keeps his promise to quit if Kanye sells more records). Until then, here’s RAVE critical appraisal of the beat-down…
 50 CENT – Curtis
(Shady/Universal) Neither as personal nor revelatory as using his first name suggests By his furrowed brow on the cover, 50 Cent seems plenty worried about how this third album is going to go. Almost as a failsafe, he’s enlisted lots of help here. On the production side, there are 14 different names at the helm for these 17 tracks, including Dr. Dre, Eminem, Timbaland and Havoc. Meanwhile, as well as Timbaland and Eminem, Justin Timberlake, Akon, Mary J Blige, Tony Yayo and others drop in on the tracks. No doubt, it will be as huge as 50 Cent (or maybe we should call him Curtis now) wants. But it doesn’t stop this from being more of the same in-your-face, mean streets posturing. With no-holds-barred titles like My Gun Go Off, I Get Money, Fully Loaded Clip and Peep Show, his outlaw bluster rarely strays from run-of-the-mill themes of domination through guns, sex and cash. That level of over-worked familiarity dissipates the tension needed to keep you alert (the sheer dullness of the crime scenario in Man Down is a case in point). There are some elements of surprise in tracks like Fire and All Of Me and 50 Cent sure struts with typical toughness and attitude, but now he’s got the money he doesn’t need to die trying. ** ½ BILL HOLDSWORTH  KANYE WEST – Graduation
(Roc-A-Fella/Universal) Give the man a chance... and listen to this album Kanye West might be famous for all of the wrong reasons, but you shouldn’t ignore him. Yes, he is a melodramatic, self-absorbed rapper whose talent doesn’t actually measure up to his opinion of it – but only by a whisker. Graduation, his third album, demonstrates why. Opener Good Morning has crossover appeal written all over it, matching a catchy beat with soaring falsetto backing vocals and lush harp lines. Although West’s rhymes can verge on the puerile – “Barely passed any and every class / Looking at any ass” – his genius as a producer is to navigate a fine line between the lyrical bombast required for rap credibility and the kind of pop production values that sell records. Sometimes his sampling is a little heavy-handed – while Stronger artfully lifts a Daft Punk line, Champion’s use of Steely Dan borders on the predictable. Regardless, the man knows how to turn out an appealing tune, as I Wonder and Can’t Tell Me Nothing attest to. Sure, his bombast can be grating – “I’m doing pretty good as far as geniuses go,” he tells us on Barry Bonds – but this only masks his insecurity about not being ‘real’, a fact that he acknowledges on Champion: “I ain’t saying we was from the projects”. West would do well to recognise that if he were to drop the ghetto machismo act, he’d be the kind of figure that his rival, 50 Cent, could never be – a long-term prospect for crossover success. ***½ CHAD PARKHILL VERDICT: Kanye West wins by a college-educated nose. Curtis Jackson looks to be doubly-damned in sales and critical reception. The moral? Stay in school, and don’t start dealing drugs at age 12.
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