Vivendi Universal announced on Friday that it will be producing a game based around rap star 50 Cent, due for release in late 2005. Entitled 50 Cent: Bulletproof (no doubt a reference to the number of times the rapper has been 'capped in the ass'), the game puts you in control of the eponymous hero as he takes part in a free-roaming crime adventure. As the press release explains:
50 gets caught in a web of corruption, double-crosses and shady deals that lead him on a bloody path through New York's drug underworld. Working with the unlikeliest of allies, the streets heat up as 50 Cent takes on the most dangerous crime families in the city, uncovering an international conspiracy with devastating implications. The streets are watching as 50 Cent blasts his way to the truth.
Following Def Jam Vendetta and more pertinently Def Jam Fight for New York, this is another game that places real-life Hip Hop artists within a fictitious gangland setting. It's an interesting sub-genre, trading in on the mythologies that many rappers build around themselves in their lyrics, album art and endless feuds - fantasies of gun violence, rivalry and retribution. You couldn't imagine artists from any other genre inhabiting the videogame world so comfortably. Radio Head in a platform adventure about the futility of existence? Can't see that one flying off the shelves at Game. But a rap star brandishing an AK-47 from the window of a Lincoln Continental? Christ, we can all relate to that!
It's no coincidence that the first Def Jam title, Vendetta, was effectively a wrestling game – the comic book showmanship of the label's mainstream roster of rap superstars has echoes in the world of WWE, and perhaps even in the Marvel menagerie of super heroes. Larger than life characters from difficult backgrounds, triumphing over evil, dodging bullets…
Will 50 Cent: Bulletproof represent an interactive version of the complicit gangsta fantasy world constructed between rap artist and listener? Or will it simply be a fun GTA-style crime romp with a compelling pop figure at its centre? Brecht once said we get the heroes we deserve. Nowadays that means millionaire ex-drug dealers. Trust me, I'm not complaining. I'll take that over people who get bitten by radioactive spiders any day.
