A former drug dealer, he’s been shot at nine times and lived to tell the tale, emerging as one of the most controversial and uncompromising figures in rap. But there's more to 50 Cent than the popular legend suggests. For a start, there’s a new commercial edge to the music, as his US and Irish number one album The Massacre demonstrates. Plus, as one of the new faces of Reebok’s ‘I Am What I Am’ campaign, he’s taken to the role of cultural icon with considerable zest. Oh, and besides, he’s a bit of a wow with the ladies.
The only serious present-day heir to sainted founding fathers DMC and NWA, ex-crack dealer 50 Cent became an overnight hip-hop Godhead with his beyond-phenomenal debut Get Rich or Die Tryin’, an echoing, booming, bloodthirsty beast saturated with paranoia, claustrophobia and general violent vibes. It sold ten million-plus copies, and Eminem aside, the spliff-toting kids in my less-than-Bronxlike suburb scarcely listen to anybody else.
While they may disagree about context and certain details, the two new television documentaries about Bloody Sunday, far from being the "bloody fantasy" alleged by critics, offer accurate and powerful recreations of the events of that tragic and pivotal day. EAMONN McCANN, an eye-witness on Bloody Sunday, reports
EAMONN McCANN reports on detailed, eye-witness claims of the Catholic Church’s involvement in the Rwandan genocide of 1994 – and of the Vatican’s efforts to protect the guilty
The evidence of two British soldiers about the shooting of unarmed civilians, heard in public for the first time, but largely overlooked in coverage of the Saville inquiry, is a direct challenge to the “official” line on bloody sunday which has held for more than 30 years.
Full profiles on Faithless, Antony & The Johnsons, Slayer, The Who, Bell X1, Status Quo, The Flaming Lips, 50 Cent, Madness, Christy Moore, Elton John and Lionel Richie.
A win next week and we're there - but what lies in store for Irish supporters if Big Jack's men do qualify for America? Long suffering England fan Stuart Clark was in the States this summer for US Cup '93 and found that if the dress rehearsal is anything to go by, the World Cup Finals should be a sporting event to savour. Main pix: Simon Parry.
The Make Poverty History marches in Dublin and Edinburgh were among the biggest political demonstrations in years. Rory Hearne kept a diary of an inspiring week on the barricades.
WHILE HE WAS BEING TERRORISED AND BRUTALISED IN MONNOWITZ, LEON GREENMAN MADE A DEAL WITH GOD: IF HE WAS TO BE ALLOWED TO SEE THE OUTSIDE OF THE DEATH CAMPS AGAIN, HE WOULD DEVOTE HIS LIFE TO TELLING THE WORLD WHAT HAPPENED THERE. NOW, AS DENIAL OF THE HOLOCAUST CONTINUES TO AID THE INSIDIOUS RISE OF THE FASCIST MOVEMENT IN EUROPE, IT IS MORE VITAL THAN EVER THAT HIS STORY IS TOLD. REPORT: GERRY McGOVERN.
Elephant is though, quite an accomplishment in filmmaking terms – it’s brilliantly atmospheric, with the music of Elgar wailing over images of footballing youths.
One of the UK’s greatest producers delves deeper into the world of dub techno: ‘Unknown Exception’s’ introspective layers and gentle bass lurch along, but they drop away suddenly at the midway point and then the track kicks back in as a metallic, minimal groove. Smart and effortlessly sublime.
Another exercise in icy perfection from Andy. The immediate ‘Massacre’ occupies a perfectly poised position between techno and dubstep, but stick with ‘Unknown Exception’ too: the slo-mo, slow builder gradually reveals itself to be a thing of rare beauty.
Superficially, director Olly Blackburn’s debut conforms to the morality play template - somewhere in the low budget murk, there’s a neat little boat thriller.
If we can force the Western armies out of Iraq then we will have put a halt to the gallop of those who are using the might of the US military to impose their brute agenda on the world.
Future generations, if there are any future generations, will look back on movies like Rules Of Engagement and feel a chill down their very spines: from Red Dawn through Independence Day and now this, the level of overt America-rules-the-planet fascism on cinematic display has positively gone through the roof.
You think you have a basic understanding of someone, and then Hollywood goes and makes an incredible movie about them and puts your knowledge to shame. That's just what audiences experience with Director Bennet Miller's eye-opening Capote.
At the time of writing it is nearly a week since the order prohibiting interviews with members of Sinn Féin and Republican Sinn Féin, as well as various proscribed paramilitary organisations, under Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act, was allowed to lapse.
Mainstream opinion on Third World debt as espoused by Geldof, Blair et al is grievously wrong. Plus reflections on the many bitter ironies at the heart of the Bloody Sunday inquiry.
As the war in Afghanistan grinds mercilessly on, it has become increasingly clear: the rules have long been forgotten, as much by the Americans and the British as by their Northern Alliance allies.
Ireland's position in all of this is, frankly, shameful
AFTER THE town of Goma, in Eastern Zaire, was taken over by rebel Tutsis of Zairean birth, the people went on a looting spree. What else could they do? They no longer had a government of their own: they did not know when next they would have work, or who would pay them.
When 28 people died in an Israeli massacre at Qana, Lebanon, the Derry Anti-War Coalition occupied Derry's Raytheon Plant. Eamon McCann reports on their visit to Qana.
Is it credible that the man who commanded the British Army in Iraq never voiced his misgivings about the war to the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair?
25 YEARS ago this month, on January 30th, 1972, Bloody Sunday, British soldiers stormed up the street where I was born and shot 13 people dead. I watched some of it happen.
They say that he was among the most powerful – and the most ruthless – Republican activists of them all. Here the legendary Bobby Storey, reputed to have been Director of Intelligence for the IRA, talks for the first time about his role in the struggle, and about some of the critical events that led to the IRA ceasefire and the Peace Process.
