50 Cent's fourth studio album, the eternally-delayed Before I Self Destruct, was first promised to drop in 2007, but Fiddy instead released Curtis (the one Kanye embarrassed him on in their retirement bet), saying he would hold Self Destruct until the time was right. The result of the delay, thankfully, is his best work since Get Rich or Die Trying. Does it push any boundaries? Nothing you wouldn't expect. But for the most part it exceeds the atrociously bottom-feeding commercialism we've come to expect from Curtis Jackson in the recent years, and that says a lot for a man so desperate for attention he's spent the last two or three years simply trying to start fights with people to keep his name in headlines.

Before I Self Destruct aims to prove that 50 Cent is still gritted, he's still strapped, and according to "The Invitation," he'll still see that you "get banged for your necklace," where "you'll just bleed and bleed 'till the police come". Because "I let my pistol sing for me" is supposed to still ring true from a man who's in hundred million dollar Hollywood films, has his own vitamin water line and goes nowhere without an arsenal of heads keeping him secure.

The production is darker, the atmosphere thicker and heavier than anything Curtis has put forth in recent years, with early street-tape narratives to accompany. It's owed to 50's vision, dictated to the dozen and a half producers that appear on the record. The end result is a good blend that doesn't sidestep too frequently from the ghetto-swagger that put him on the map.

Eminem's verse on the Dre-produced "Psycho" is so surgically vicious and delicious it's disappointing to hear 50 return - even after the third wind back. "Beat the Octomom to death with a Cabbage-Patch Kid" is just one of many hilariously nasty jabs Mr. Mathers slips in, not forgetting to drop a Christopher Reeve mention in the process. What is it with that dude and Christopher Reeve? Anyway, the track is an album highlight, specifically for Em's devastatingly masterful presence.

His two previous albums were unabashed commercial whoring with little artistic endeavor, but it's here that Jackson dons his early-mixtape persona, a sense of conveyance that transcends the bullshit he's spent the past few years dwelling on - hype-bomb false beefs, club-desperate hook jams and product-shilling. This is the first collection from 50 Cent in a very long time that focuses on the art of Hip-Hop, through both celebration and evolution.

Of course, all of this is assuming you've got the stomach for the standard desperately overwrought sexism and machismo, with guns and fucking serving as the primary undercurrents for essentially everything on the album. "Baby By Me," featuring Ne-Yo, centers on the endlessly-repeated line "Have a baby by me, baby, be a millionaire.." would be hilarious if it weren't a dead-serious carrot on a stick.

"She used to have the Beemer, now she on the sneaker/ I had her eatin' lobster, now she eatin' pizza" airs out laundry Jackson could've - and should've - kept to himself. All he wants to do is fuck and be friends - is that surprising? Is that necessary to point out yet again? Apparently so, but "Ok, You're Right" is a skippable track, unless you're having a misogyny attack.

The sarcastic, ruthless wit that drew people in to begin with may be back to a degree, but it doesn't stop the second half of the album from sagging under its own need to be everything to everyone. "Hold Me Down," "Crime Wave" and "Ok, You're Right" are bland middleground dwellers, while "Death To My Enemies" escapes a similar purgatorial fate through deliberate minimalism and "Days Went By" is buoyed by an organ-laced groove.

Sixteen tracks deep, Before I Self Destruct is solid, but doesn't come within reach of a classic; there's plenty of room for Jackson's clumsy off-steps and shameless club aspirations, but he hits a stride on the album that's more important than any rapid-blast single or commercial appeal out of the gate; it sounds like he's charismatically engaged, not patronizing in detachment. Here's hoping he listens to his fanbase, who already seem reinvigorated by what they've heard on the leaked tracks, and stays truer to the fire that put him on the map in the first place.

CraveOnline's Rating: 7 out of 10