Make that $2-million on Doom against Wayne.

Update 2/3: On second thought, this isn’t “ether”, and to have labeled it as such is actually an insult to the word and all that it stands for in hip-hop. True, 50 succeeds at delivering some pretty harsh blows to Rick’s character (which is the ultimate goal of any rapper engaging in battle with his/her opponent), however, the method behind his madness here (using his opponent’s ex-girlfriend as a pawn in such an unprecedented fashion) is all too real, too sleazy to sit back and cheer on as one would in a normal rap battle (which this is clearly not). This is the sort of thing that you’d expect to see on daytime televison, not in the midst of a what should be an entertaining rap battle confined to lyrics. What I fear most, though, is that in this age of hip-hop meets new media, this will become the norm. Just as “Nas vs. Jay” gassed up a legion of mediocre rapcats to take their best shots at hip-hop’s elite, this stunt and others like it, will give the go ahead to a new legion mediocre rapcats to take to youtube (and other video outlets) to do what it is that they are not artistically capable of doing on pen and pad, in the booth, or on the mic.

Imagine this scenario: You walk into your local polling place and discover that, as a result of some twisted turn of events, Barack Obama, John McCain, Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nadar are no longer running as candidates for PoTUS. Instead, they’ve been replaced on the ballots by Murs, Mos Def and Wyclef–all members of a newly formed, leftist political party known as the Sedgwickrats.

Now, considering you don’t go totally berserker (c)(John McCain) on a poll worker at this point and, you stick around to catch a glimpse of the following videos that
have been supplied by the respective candidates to aide you in this 11th hour decision. Which candidate would win your vote in the end:

Murs:

Mos:

Wyclef:

Basic Vocab – Come Get With It

Oh, and, by the way: Late & Pass.

Or is it? I asked that question on Twitter the other day (What say you?). If nothing else I could definitely hear this track as background music in a rapid cutting “My Anti Drug” type of commercial…Ha! Either way, I’m loving the video (looks, feels really spontaneous and amateur-cool) and the track, although it took a while to grow on me. LOL @ the Lindsay Lohan cameo…talk about irony!

Ha!

[via Nah Right]

[H/T: Darien]

I applaud 50 on the move, however, the really odd (and in some ways interesting) thing about all of this, is the amount major media attention that this story’s received–CNN, Wall Street Journal, LA Times (not to mention, the various media outlets that have mentioned the story during their on air reports). It’s pretty crazy. I wonder though, does this story matter to them because it’s 50 Cent (outspoken, controversial rapper) at the center of it all? Or because it’s 50 Cent (outspoken, controversial rapper and the establishment’s unofficial hip-hop representative) at the center of it all? You have to wonder.

Props to So-Me on art direction, and Machine Molle on motion design. The old school logos and tv bumper spoofs are pretty clever (recognize any?). I wonder if we’ll see a slightly altered, yet equally dope, hip-hop version of this video sometime in the near future? Last time, if you remember, it was Kanye who linked up with So-Me to style his Good Life video– which was based on So’s work here.