Twelve years after his last Austrian performance and 18 years after his last Vienna gig, New York’s cult rapper 50 Cent stopped by again. In the Wiener Stadthalle he delivered a solid, if not outstanding, hit revue of his big hits of the noughties. In the organization, however, there were grosser failures.
“Rider Pt. 2”, “PIMP” or the mega hit “Candy Shop” – 50 Cent is said to have been on the stage of the Wiener Stadthalle for less than fifteen minutes and is already firing the biggest hits of his career into the cheering crowd right from the start. “Supposedly” because, due to a serious organizational chaos on the part of the organizer, dozens of fans stand in their stomachs at the box office until well after the concert has started and remain surprisingly calm despite the inconvenience. Ticket winners had to tremble for their admission. The distribution of press and photo passes was more like a lottery game than orderly planning, which is why some colleagues gave up at some point rather than remain in the dark. We were then granted admission after a good 35 minutes, when 50 was already over with the Bob Marley cover “Is This Love” and almost two thirds of the concert over. Up and down, up and down The roughly 7000 to 8000 fans celebrated their heroes unstoppable on his return to Austria despite all the quarrels. His last appearance in Vienna dates from August 2004 at the peak of his career as part of the “Hip-Hop-Mania” on Vienna’s Danube Island. In 2010 he gave a curious guest performance in the Linz shopping mall “PlusCity” somewhere between an Italian pizzeria and a hearty falafel Salesperson. Curtis James Jackson III, as he is known, has long since broken out of these temporary shoals, but they have been waiting for a full eight years for a new album. Last but not least, the business genius has also built his empire as a book author, actor and resourceful businessman and lives on the hits of the old days. In the 2000s, the New Yorker was at the peak of his career and right behind Eminem at a popularity level that can no longer be grasped today. The album triple “Get Rich Or Die Tryin'” (2003), “The Massacre” (2005) and “Curtis” (2007) is beyond doubt and 15 to 20 years later at least still has a humorous and nostalgic effect. In Vienna, three pompous stage blocks stand in front of a huge video wall, the stage is flanked by oversized champagne bottles and either twerking dancers or flying banknotes flicker into the auditorium on the screen. The big pants principle, which was still state of the art in hip-hop almost two decades ago, seems a bit humorous and to a certain extent disconcerting in increasingly enlightened times like these.Zack zack zack50 Cent has become a trained and snacked on decent morsels, surprisingly he gathered real guitarists, bassists and drummers at his workplace to duel with the DJ and samples. Whether the rap revue contains a strong portion of self-irony or whether the artist is simply amused by himself is difficult to judge from a distance. It is important that everyone has fun. Sometimes in a Ferrari shirt and sometimes in a baseball shirt, he wanders across the stage, lets the thick gold chains jingle around his neck and the next dancer is never more than a meter away from him. He handles songs like “Hustler’s Ambition”, “Outta Control” or the hit “In da Club”, reinforced with gold confetti rain, in medley style. Massive pyro and light effects support the fast-paced intoxication of the songs, which knows no breaks and gets along almost completely without any intermediate announcements. A concert like an ICE train. Especially with the faster and bass-heavy numbers you have to fight your way through a muddled mush of sound, but if 50 Cent takes things a little more calmly in between, then you lose his affection for the fine nuances in the sound. Otherwise, the rapper has already brought everything to the table in the earlier years that the genre ABC demands. Father never met, mother was murdered, became a dealer herself, a body riddled with stab wounds and bullet holes, several jail terms, women were beaten and even supported Donald Trump. In addition, he also persistently honed his rap skills, was in the right place at the right time, negotiated a major record deal, conquered the USA and Europe and allegedly had a private fortune of 500 million euros. With full trousers it stinks today, so pomp and swank can definitely be reflected in the show. Own legend Jackson hasn’t played according to the rules of the market for years. He chooses his concerts wisely and according to the fee, then jets between Brazil, Austria and Qatar in a few days to fill the coffers with serious climate ignorance. For his – guaranteed not cheap – performance in Vienna, he is only slightly late, but lets the fun slip away again after only 85 minutes. But the hits were there, the mood was fiery and the artist and band were in a good mood. He can’t do anything about the trappings, but a little more tension, playing time and motivating fire could have hidden the fact that someone is mainly celebrating their own legend and wallowing in the bath of the crowd. 50 Cent was at liberty to do so, but a few kilometers in the Flex, the young Briton Scarlxrd, the future of rap, played the same evening and turned the hut upside down. But it is also nice that yesterday and tomorrow meet for an evening in today. And that in the middle of Vienna.
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