50 Cent concert shortchanges fans

Such is the ubiquity of Curtis “ 50 Cent” Jackson that, even today, this is likely not your first encounter with his formerly bulletmug.

In album, video game, movie, clothing, and most noticeably, advertisement form, 50 is everywhere. His story — his drugdealing mother murdered when he was eight, his own incarnation as a dealer, his rise from the lethal ghettos of New York, and his incredible victory in an encounter against nine bullets — is so often retold that even the most active avoiders of gangsta rap know it by rote.

Even a fully grown writer heading to his concert Friday night at the Pacific Coliseum heard a few nervous hems and haws from her own mother. Be careful, sweetheart.

It seems, though, that for every parent made nervous by Fiddy, there is another who is equally willing to send their young offspring to wave their hands in the air like they just don’t care for the Queens rapper. Indeed, the demographic at Friday’s show skewed young, and though the kids were tricked out in some of the most ghetto-fabulous attire going, you had best believe that a parent somewhere in the suburbs had to foot the $46-$76 bill for tickets.

After opening slots by Canuck rappers Moka Only and Kardinal Offishall, the crowd was suitably hyped for 50, and after a DJ dropped a couple songs by Snoop, Eminem and Dr. Dre, the lights went down to reveal … a preview for 50’ s new biopic, Get Rich or Die Tryin’, shown on the giant screens flanking the stage. And if you hadn’t yet seen the movie, another less demanding treatment of 50’s life followed, repeating his rags-to-riches story as if it were a fairy tale.

When the lights finally went up, 50 stood upon a raised platform while hype man Lloyd Banks got the already-pumped crowd even more worked up. 50 announced that, due to Immigration Canada’s totally square