Thug Life

I’ve read that some cities, Los Angeles among them, have succeeded in pressuring Paramount to remove billboards for Get Rich or Die Tryin’, the semi-biographical film starring rapper Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson. They depict his well-muscled bullet-scarred back with arms outstretched, gun in one hand and microphone in the other. Compounding the self-aggrandizing nature of such imagery, I saw that one of the billboards still existed a block away from my apartment and was topped with more fine messaging for urban youth: a Dewar’s whisky billboard.

Serendipitously, a day later, Fitty had been replaced by a Spanish-language billboard for Chase.