The “international version” of 50 Cent’s new album leaked this afternoon. A month early. Sucks for 50 and whoever leaked it, but its pretty cool for us. Curtis promised a grimier album, and delivers… kinda. The first half of this is really good, suprisingly so, but the last 7 or so songs are either terrible single attempts or terrible singy bullshit lovey songs. You would think that a seasoned rap industry bully like 50 would know that his fans will buy his albums no matter what and he doesn’t need to do songs with R Kelly and Ne-Yo anymore, but there they are. Bad. At least we get a good 10 songs worth of drugs, guns and violence.

The relative lack of guests is a nice surprise, with Eminem “renegading” (Man, such a tired term) 50 on “Psycho”. Tony Yayo would have sounded right at home on tracks like “So Disrespectful” and “Death To My Enemies”, but Interscope kinda fucked that up. The production doesn’t get too exciting, but “Death To My Enemies” and “Crimewave” are a nice change of pace from the sterile Dre-ish plodding that 50 usually works with. Young Buck, Rick Ross, Lil Wayne and Jay-Z all catch disses in varying degrees of harshness and Fif does some nice things lyrically and flow-wise, but he is still 50 Cent…

Hopefully the leak will result in internet outrage over the bullshit at the end of the album and 50 will leave the crap off of the final product. Probably not. Here are some of the solid gold jams off of this thing: