50 Cent Sued For Bein’ Gangsta?

By Peter Kimmich: 2008-04-10 03:30:25

I will almost never say anything in favor of a rapper being “hard,” because I think going out of one’s way to flex one’s testosterone and get all hot and bothered is stupid and fake. It’s that crap that makes drunk people get in bar fights over nothing, or worse, makes ignorant kids pull guns in school. But if there’s anything as aggravating as pseudo-masculine belligerence for no reason, it’s naïve people trying to blame that belligerence on music and artists.

A 14-year-old boy and his mother are suing 50 Cent, Universal Records and a handful of its labels and associates because the boy says he was assaulted by some of the rapper’s friends. James Rosemond and his mother, Cynthia Reed, are holding the music group, the labels and the rapper responsible for pushing rap artists into a life of crime and violence – or more specifically, encouraging violence for the sake of upholding the gangsta image, Reuters reported Wednesday.

Rosemond claims he was assaulted in March 2007 when G-Unit rapper and 50 Cent-coffee-getter Tony Yayo, his employee Lowell Fletcher and two others targeted him on a Manhattan sidewalk for wearing the wrong T-shirt. The shirt was by Czar Entertainment, the management company of former G-Unit rapper-turned-rival The Game. Yayo later pleaded guilty to harassment and made a gangsta show of cleaning up highway garbage for 10 days; Fletcher pleaded guilty to endangering a child and did 9 months in gangsta day camp.

The first thing that bothers me about this scenario is that a then-28-year-old rapper and three of his boys would take it up with an eighth-grader over his T-shirt. These guys must have gotten their diplomas from Shithead High. What did they want to do, send him home crying? Did they drop-kick a toddler next? I don’t see how they’re enforcing any kind of hard image, except possibly the image of the hard smack-upside-the-head they need.

The icing on this effed-up cake, though, is the fact that the kid turns around and tries to make a case out of the idea that 50 Cent (who wasn’t named as one of the assailants, and he’s pretty recognizable), Universal Music Group (headquartered in Santa Monica, 2810.74 miles away), and three specific labels, (total staff: two people, I guess?) can be held responsible for a) rap music making people belligerent, b) belligerent people being morons, and c) these four specific belligerent morons getting in his face. What the judge needs to do come trial time is step down from his bench, slap the defendants, turn around and slap the prosecution. I rest my case, court adjourned.

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