Oddly enough, as I listened to the string of numbers indicating the number of times 50 Cent was shot, I flashed on the Rodney King incident and a Senator, I think, counting off numbers using pencil taps to illustrate how many times King was hit by those cops with their batons. I'm not saying this spot is great art, but it's certainly both provocative and evocative and that's what I look for in art and advertising.
I'm currently working on a piece that expands on my previous posts related to 50 Cent and recent news, Hip Hop Shooting: Follow the Money, Not the Macho and a Part 2. So I'm finding a lot of great stuff on 50 Cent the businessman as well as his comments on media obsession with the fact that he was shot 9 times, an obsession that initially went far beyond his own use of the past as marketing fodder.
He states:
"As an artist, you write about where you come from and who you are . . . The fact that I was shot nine times almost overshadowed the fact that I could make a hit record. I said to them over and over that the hardest thing to deal with was not being shot, but having to deal with what I was going to do with my life after I was shot."
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