The Day 50 Cent Threatened Gawker.com, Michelle Obama, and His Own Grandmother on Twitter

Though 50 Cent has had his own verified account on Twitter for a while now, it's safe to say that yesterday was the rapper's official debut on the social media site. How do we know this? Because about 24 hours ago the robotic, self-promotional, ghost-written stream of updates occasionally posted to 50's account gave way, suddenly, to a torrent of hilarious vitriol. (His ghostwriter was as shocked as the rest of us.) Many rappers play villains but are quite nice when it comes to the real world and its online proxies. 50 Cent, however, is in fact a villain, whether on record, YouTube, Shyne-conference-call, or elsewhere. If you didn't think so before, we'd argue that he kind of proved it yesterday. Behold: a veritable mountain of contempt for failed Haitian presidential candidate Wyclef Jean, G-Unit compatriot Tony Yayo, Gawker, Michelle Obama, his own manager, and yup, grandma. Yikes, 50:

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And Now, The Condensed Version Of Christopher R. Weingarten's Twitter Rant

So. Our dear friend discussed Internet rock criticism recently at the 140 Characters Conference. I have taken the liberty of distilling his wisdom down to 44 seconds. You're welcome.

"Don't Believe The Hype Machine": Our Man Christopher R. Weingarten, Tearing Down Internet Rock Criticism (And Swearing Up A Storm) Once Again At The 140 Characters Conference

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(It's embedded after the jump; starts automatically, little bugger.)
​'Twas a year ago that dear friend-of-SOTC Christopher R. Weingarten's star was truly born when he cussed a blue streak at a Twitter conference; here we have the sequel, delivered Tuesday. Stopped counting at 20 F-bombs, though there are around that many splendid one-liners ("Good writing dies at the hands of search-engine optimization"). He's bleak but he's jolly, folks. Oh, and nice shirt.

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Swedish Twee-&-B Duo jj Cover "Birthday Sex." Why?

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​You may have noticed that Zach and Camille--SOTC's daily stewards--aren't posting today, because they're on some kind of spiritual retreat that I'm not privy to the details of. As a guest, I'd be remiss in not writing an amorphous think piece that will fall through the cracks between more web-ready tidbits like "New Rolling Stones Song Exists" and "Something Is Not Safe For Work." jj's cover of "Birthday Sex" offers just such an opportunity.

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New York Noise Update from NYC Media: 'If You Liked Our Music-Video Show So Much, Why Don't You Make It Yourself?'

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Been publicly tracking the dispiriting, and unexplained, departure of NYC-TV's terrific local music show New York Noise for over a month now, along with monitoring the "Bring Back New York Noise" citizen petition and the Facebook group that's 747 members strong (including yours truly) and full of comments like: "NY Noise was a little piece of joy in a city turning to poo!
[B]ring it back please!" And finally, there's a development: the Bloomberg TV forces are considering bringing it back!

But wait.

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Oh Look, Somebody Wrote Something Skeptical About Jay-Z On the Internet

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​Now this is going to get embarrassing fast, riding out to the defense of a multi-millionaire every time somebody writes something terrifically ill-informed and misguided about him. That said. There are some provocations that are just too much--are surely intended to be too much--and starting a paragraph in piece called "Enough With the Jay-Z Fetish" in following way is certainly one of them:

Don't take it from me! I'm just one jerk. But I just got back from the Harvest of Hope Festival, a huge three-day music festival in Florida, where I got the chance to interview Dead Prez, the single most non-hypocritical rap group in America, the closest thing to a modern-day Public Enemy.
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Here's To Axl Rose and the Bunch of Random Dudes Calling Themselves Guns N' Roses Getting the Hell Out of Town

So Sebastian Bach saved Axl Rose from being attacked by a maniac with a blade the other night at the Gramercy Hotel's Rose Bar. "Nobody is getting anywhere near my man Axl Rose with a knife," said the one-time Skid Row frontman, and from his position atop a banquet, he summoned security to cast what may in fact have been a very sensible individual out into the cold. It was Valentine's Day at the Purple mag afterparty, and the band of misfits who call themselves Guns N' Roses were blasting the assembled celebrities with a two hour set not unlike the one the band had visited on an unsuspecting crowd inside a John Varvatos store last week. Fashion Week ends tomorrow and with any luck, it will take Axl Rose with it.

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So Let's Deal With This "Taylor Swift Is a Feminist's Nightmare" Thing

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Admittedly the chart is pretty rad
​So this lengthy, multimedia screed (thesis: "The rush to exalt Swift is (I believe) a desperate attempt to infuse our allegedly apocalypse-bound country with a palatable conservative ideology in the form of a complacent, repressed feminine ideal") is making the rounds. Ms. Swift is lambasted for a) blatantly promoting abstinence, b) overusing hackneyed lyrical themes (great chart for that, actually), c) not being as visually/sexually provocative as Lady Gaga, etc. Her lyrics lean on lazy high school tropes even though she was home-schooled and so forth. There's a strange "when I have kids, they'll listen to cool stuff" undertone, which, well, good luck. But here's the most notable problem:

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Kanye Is Back in the Studio, World: "LET US SOAK IN POSITIVE FORCES AND LOOK DOWN ON UPON THOSE WHO MASQUERADE AS TRUTH TELLERS"

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​The-Dream can make a song worthy of Sam Cooke in less than 37 minutes, but no one but Kanye can make the creative process seem like slaying dragons and free jumping off of high cliffs and generally marshalling the forces of good against the forces of evil. To wit:

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The-Dream Responds To (Our) Allegations That He Ruined Mariah Carey's Memoirs

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​Well, you know, not by name or anything. But we did write this headline the other day. So we gotta be in the conversation at least, right? Anyway, we stand by our verdict: too much show jumping, not enough "Love Vs. Money." Same goes for Rihanna's record. Nice boots though. [@OfficialDream, via Rap Radar]

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