50 Cent - Guess Who's Back? Again (2004)

50 Cent (Curtis James Jackson) had a troubled childhood, dealing narcotics at age 12 when his grandparents thought he was in after-school programs, as well as bringing guns and drug money to school. In the tenth grade, he was caught by metal detectors at Andrew Jackson High School, and in 1994 he was arrested for selling four vials of cocaine to an undercover police officer. He was arrested again three weeks later, when police searched his home and found heroin, ten ounces of crack cocaine, and a starting pistol, and although he was sentenced to three to nine years in prison, he served six months in a boot camp and earned his GED. In order to try to turn his life around in the late 90's, he adopted the name 50 Cent and began rapping in a friend's basement, where he used turntables to record over instrumentals, and in 1996, a friend introduced him to Jam Master Jay of Run-DMC, who was establishing Jam Master Jay Records. Jay taught him how to count bars, write choruses, structure songs, and make records, and his first appearance was on 'React' with Onyx, for their 1998 album 'Shut 'Em Down'. He credited Jam Master Jay for improving his ability to write hooks, but he left Jay in 1999, and the platinum-selling producers Trackmasters signed him to Columbia Records. They sent him to an upstate New York studio, where he produced thirty-six songs in two weeks, eighteen of which were included on his unreleased 2000 album 'Power Of The Dollar'. He continued to record, laying down over thirty songs for mixtapes to build a reputation, using the DJ circuit to his advantage by taking the hottest beats from other artists and flipping them with better hooks. His popularity increased, and in 2002 he released the mixtape 'Guess Who's Back?', and when Eminem heard it he was impressed enough to invite 50 Cent to fly to Los Angeles and introduce him to Dr. Dre. After signing a $1 million record deal, he released the mixtape 'No Mercy, No Fear', and in 2003 he issued his debut album 'Get Rich Or Die Tryin'', described by AllMusic as "probably the most hyped debut album by a rap artist in about a decade". It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 872,000 copies in its first four days, and it's lead single 'In Da Club' set a Billboard record as the most listened-to song in radio history within a week. Despite being signed to a label and having an actual record under his belt, 50 Cent carried on recording songs for his mixtapes, and in 2004 he released his next one 'Guess Who's Back? Again', featuring all new tracks from this most productive part of his career, so here it is for your enjoyment.  

Track listing

01 Intro (Shot Caller '04)
02 Here We Go
03 Doin' My Own Thing 
04 Guess Who's Back Again  
05 She Luv It
06 Die For Me
07 After My Chedda
08 G-Unit Soldier (Ride Out)
09 187 Freestyle
10 Flex Freestyle
11 No Introduction
12 As Time Goes By
13 Heaven/Hell
14 Gee's Up 
15 Gettin' Mine 
16 Bad News (Mixtape Version)
17 I'm A Soldier
18 Ching, Ching, Ching
19 Say What You Want (Outro)