Zoom-in Online

This blog post was contributed by Max Willens, ZIO's Music Channel Assistant.

Don't look now, G-Unit fans, but even The New York Times says gangsta rap is played out.

The Old Grey Lady may have said it in her reliably dry way ("a new chapter of hip-hop nostalgia," in Jon Pareles's words), but the point was well-received. That phrase closed Pareles's review of Saturday's This is 50 Fest at Governors Island, and as of this writing, it remains the only published review of the event; a few hip hop websites linked to Pareles's review, but interest in This is 50 Fest seems to have been pretty scant.

Given the star power involved - Kid Cudi, Wale, Jim Jones, Juelz Santana, and Jadakiss, just to name a few - this had to come as something of a shock to Fif's PR people. But it's also another sobering example of just how sharply hip hop has swerved away from gangster caricature.

Just a couple years ago, 50 Cent was hip hop's undisputed champ, a multi-platinum selling draw at both the record store and the box office. But some time around 2007, America's appetite for gangsta rap vanished into thin air, and 50 has been scrambling ever since. Amazon search results show the release date for his fourth studio album, Before I Self-Destruct, has been pushed back over two years, and some bizarrely indulgent extras have been tacked on, including a 90-minute feature film that 50 wrote, produced, and directed.

Even Saturday night's lineup spoke to how desperately 50's people are trying to drum up interest in him. Kid Cudi and Wale are the cream of a new crop of very self-aware rappers, artists who aggressively engage with their own cultural legacy and impact, and the kind of competition that 50 happily feuded with just a couple years ago. But with his career in the balance (Before I Self-Destruct, if it ever comes out, is the final album he owes his current label, Interscope) and some very big hip hop albums scheduled for release later this year, including Wale's own Attention Deficit, 50's people probably just wanted to get him all the attention he could get.