At the Pacific Coliseum on Saturday, December 3

50 Cent's a hustler, and there's just no getting around it. The product that he's pushing is as dangerous or harmless as you believe it to be: a seductive, hostile persona that forces stereotypes of masculinity and criminality to ultimate extremes. The slick 50 Cent brand now encompasses everything from sneakers to sex toys, video games to novels, and it essentially reflects back to society-and the hip-hop generation in particular-our morbid fascination with violence, death, sex, and power. And we're buying it, in droves.

It was no surprise, then, that 50 Cent's Saturday-night concert began with a trailer for his latest venture-the Hollywood autobiographical flick Get Rich or Die Tryin'-followed by a montage that can only be described as a branding campaign. Clips from music videos were spliced with covers of magazines and press footage to reinforce the image of Fifty as über-thug: young, rich, fly, and bulletproof.

The crowd-a mix of weeded-out dudes in G-Unit jerseys and wildly drunk chicks in minuscule tank tops and hooker heels-was utterly mesmerized from the get-go. When 50 burst on-stage with Lloyd Banks to alarming pyrotechnics and his signature gunshot and coin-dropping sound effects, the Coliseum literally exploded. That energy was maintained for the entire 90-minute performance.

"They ain't want to let me in the country," 50 hollered to the stands-immediately jumping all over the controversy that Toronto MP Dan McTeague triggered when he attempted to block the buff rapper's entrance to Canada. As a result, Fifty explained, G-Unit soldiers Young Buck, Tony Yayo, Mobb Deep, and M.O.P. couldn't make it across the border. By way of response, 50 sang the taunting hook to "Gunz Come Out" a cappella: "Y'all know what I'm about/Front on me or my dough, then the guns come out".

But to the careful observer, the concert was about much more than don't-give-a-fuck exhibitionism. The side of Curtis Jackson that's rarely publicized is his workaholic perfectionism, and it was on full view this evening. When Fifty was last here, his showmanship consisted of amateurish stage pacing and boring self- aggrandizing. A year-and-a-half later, his live show is among the most engaging in the game. With entertaining antics-forgetting the lyrics to "Wanksta" because of a big-breasted woman in the front row, using cameramen to call out lazy-ass folks on the floor who remained seated, and having the arena chant "Let's smoke weed, get drunk, and fuck"-50 easily won over Van City's notoriously hard-to-impress concertgoers. Mashing up material from old mix tapes, his debut and sophomore releases, G-Unit projects, and Banks's solo album-and bringing out new G-Unit Records labelmates Ma$e and Olivia-50 bombarded the crowd with a staggeringly impressive array of chart-topping joints. From "In Da Club" to "P.I.M.P." to "Just a Lil' Bit" to his newest single "Window Shopper"-you name it, he dropped it.

G-Unit has more hit records out than any other camp right now, and there's a simple reason for that: 50 has mastered a magic formula of catchy hooks, booty-shaking beats, and gully rhymes that satisfies the ladies and the fellas alike. That the dude can go an entire show without delivering a dud is indisputable evidence of this. Call him a marketing genius or call him a menace-but don't call him mediocre.