The Ted Nugent of hip-hop seems to have reached his Little Miss Dangerous phase. On Fiddy's fourth album, the muscle-bound-warrior routine is the only one he trusts, so he keeps milking it. He's still got the knack in the superb Dre production "Death to My Enemies," baiting Lil Wayne over a stand-up bass: "This ain't the Carter/Nigga, this is Sparta/It's harder." He crowds the guest list with Eminem (Octomom jokes? So last January!), R. Kelly and Ne-Yo, while threatening Young Buck and the Game in "So Disrespectful." This is an album where "Got more guns than a gun store" passes for wordplay — but that's how 50 sticks to basics.

“Everyday People”

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.