G-Unit's Beg for Mercy: A Review

After the release of his sales shattering debut album Get Rich or Die Tryin (read review), 50 Cent released the Beg for Mercy album featuring his group G-Unit, who had been featured on his post-columbia, pre-Shady/Aftermath records mixtapes. Actually, only two-thirds of the G-Unit of the excellent Guess Who's Back, 50 Cent is the Future, No Mercy, No Fear, and God's Plan among other mixtapes - 50 Cent and Lloyd Banks - appear here. At the time, Tony Yayo was incarcerated for violating his parole by going on a promotional tour overseas with the Shady/Aftermath camp. New G-Unit member Young Buck, a Tennessee-born rapper who first appeared on Get Rich or Die Tryin, and who was often mistaken as a wholesale replacement for Tony Yayo, is the third piece of this group's debut album.

For those familiar with those early mixtapes, Beg for Mercy is a jarring change. The chemistry of the original trio was spectacular, with Lloyd Banks providing flurries of punchline-heavy wordplay, and tony Yayo playing the energetic, outspoken hypeman to the clear star 50 Cent. Here, at least partially because Young Buck was a newcomer, an unknown quantity to the public and perhaps in some measure an unknown artistic quantity to 50 Cent and Lloyd Banks, the chemistry between the three is less than stellar. It is also likely that the rapid transition from mixtapes to national prominence was a little much for Lloyd Banks and Young Buck to swallow; nevertheless, the three at points seem to be delivering their verses in isolation.

By and large though, the album has a loose feel, like a mixtape. The tracks are thematically related to the title only insofar as the content is generally extremely aggressive, though sonically and style-wise the individual tracks often have little in common. The album's clear purpose is to showcase the G-Unit roster, much in the way that Jay-Z's The Dynasty Roc La Familia (read review) was intended to highlight Roc-A-fella artists Memphis Bleek and Beanie Siegel. And it does so well. You get the clear measure of each rapper: Banks' lyrical wizardry, Young Buck's laconic and brash candor, and 50 Cent's charismatic boasting, over the album's eighteen tracks. The length is not an issue - after all G-Unit is hyperbolic theater: excess is expected. But 50 himself delivers some of the most lackluster verses of his career, on trakkc like Betta Ask Somebody and Eye for an Eye. In context, it's easy to see how this might occur, as Get Rich or Die Tryin was released in February 2003, and the rapper released even more mixtapes between its release and the release of Beg for Mercy (in November of 2003) while on tour. An early version of Lay You Down made the mixtape rounds in the summer of 2003, for example. But it is disappointing nonetheless.

The production is top-notch and the songs are generally solid, though a guest star or two would have reduced the monotony you will almost certainly feel halfway through the album. Still there are plenty of winners here: the Eminem-produced My Buddy, Lay You Down, the-Dr. Dre helmed Popping Them Thangs, and each member's respective solo track, among them. The insularity and a marked decrease in the energy level here as compared to the mixtapes bring the album down a notch, but as beg for mercy is a national showcase of the talent of 50 Cent's roster, it is a success.