Get Rich or Die Tryin' Review

The gift was never the rapping, it was the ear. He writes choruses the way pop producers do, simple intervals sung slightly off key so they lodge instantly, and he attaches them to threats. In Da Club is the obvious case, a birthday song that sounds like a warning, and it is still one of the most efficient singles the form has produced. Many Men is the record's real centre, self pity turned into something almost liturgical, and Heat is a masterpiece of arrangement built from gun sounds used as percussion.

Dre and Eminem give him beats that are dry, mean and uncluttered, all low end and space, which suits a voice slurred by the jaw injury he never stopped mentioning. The writing is plain and repetitive by design, and there is nothing here you would call a great verse. As a piece of pop machinery aimed at exactly one moment it is close to perfect, and it still plays.