***1/2
The first time I ever heard 50 Cent (say it right--"fiddy-sssent!") was over the telephone. I'd get these excited late-night calls from my friend in Detroit--"Listen, listen, lii-sssssten!" he'd laugh, and blast me with this crazy low-fi gangsta rap. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Not since N.W.A. had something sounded so gritty, so raw--sooo thug-nasty.

I searched everywhere for the infamous mix tapes and bootlegs, but the only 50 Cent I could find locally was 2001's Guess Who's Back?. The CD rarely left my player. I was completely addicted. The album's super-simplistic beats, paired with 50's greasy, perfectly effortless flow, was the most balls-out funny, dangerous hiphop I'd ever heard.

I went crazy waiting for the new album. Now that I have Get Rich or Die Tryin', I'm a little disappointed. While 50's still an absolute superstar--giggling and shit-talking his way through all his wack-ass stories o' the hood--it sounds like producers Eminem and Dre tried too hard. The new album is too slick--the beats too big. It almost seems like they were thinking of the MTV video before the tracks were even cut. Though it's still my favorite new purchase of 2003, Get Rich or Die Tryin' makes me want to get my hands on those raw, underproduced mix tapes more than ever. KELLY O

LAURA VEIRS

Troubled by Fire

(Bella Union)

***
While Seattle's Laura Veirs made the rounds on KEXP with her 2001 album, The Triumphs and Travails of Orphan Mae, her latest release, Troubled by Fire, will hopefully net her new fans beyond the confines of Northwest radio. Veirs is one talented songwriter, moving easily between folksy ballads and catchy pop tunes within the course of one album, and her ability to wear multiple musical hats is one of her strongest assets. It's Veirs' wide-ranging style that also makes Troubled by Fire difficult to describe without making her seem schizophrenic, though. At one point, the album--which floats somewhere between twangy alt-country and jangly indie rock--flows from a drum-laden rock song layered with Veirs' swooning lyrics into a banjo solo, for cryin' out loud. Later, Veirs' Lucinda Williams-esque vocal stylings are paired with dreamy orchestral violin backup, reminiscent of Badly Drawn Boy. While these multi-genre elements could easily cause a musical mess for a less talented performer, Veirs and producer Tucker Martine pull them together with elegant skill. AMY JENNIGES

Laura Veirs & the Tortured Souls' CD release party is Sat March 8 at the Sunset, 9 pm, $8.

XIU XIU

A Promise

(5 Rue Christine)

****
In print, Oakland's Xiu Xiu come off like the collective masturbation of the music press--the shameful pleasure that no one can simply own up to without elaborate, latex-gloved qualifications. So the band is indulgent, impossibly pathetic, histrionic, and pretentious; so what? They're also fucking beautiful, and you know it.

Xiu Xiu's latest CD, A Promise, follows in the familiar steps of its predecessor, Knife Play, finding vocalist Jamie Stewart again making every strained syllable sound like a suicide note in the breast pocket of a broken man: moaning and quavering over restrained synths and trash-heap percussion that throb like a fading pulse. Somehow simultaneously more conventional and more erratic than ever before, it takes roughly five minutes for A Promise to reach its glorious peak, with an embarrassingly earnest (perhaps an honest appraisal of everything Xiu Xiu stands for), caterwauled refrain of "Oh this relief, it's the oddest thing/Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!" that haunts the drive of "Apistat Commander." What follows is a glorious mess of filth, pain, and nebulous, exploitative distress--from the unsettling photo of a Vietnamese prostitute that graces the cover, to the surprisingly restrained take on Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car." A Promise ensures another come-soaked dirty secret stuffed between the proverbial mattresses of the nation's press pool. ZAC PENNINGTON

CLAUDE CHALLE

Claude Challe Presents: Near Eastern Lounge from the R.E.G. Project

(Virgin)

***
For the West, the region of the Near and Middle East means two contradictory things: At one end, it's the land of religious fanatics, those who refuse to progress to a democratic order, remaining locked in the impossible project of establishing and maintaining a strict theocracy. On the other hand, it is the land veiled by perfume and incense. The harems, the belly dancers, the beautiful boys, the olives, the oils, the passions of the desert--this is the other East, which, like the restrained East, is as much an illusion as it is actual. The CD Claude Challe Presents: Near Eastern Lounge introduces an East immediately recognizable as the realm of the senses, the realm of flesh and royal robes. The music comes from a Lebanese trio called the R.E.G. Project, who produce dance music that combines Kraftwerk electronics, traditional Lebanese percussions, French impressionist melodies, and house rhythms. The fusion is impossible not to like, and the band has had great success in its country and city, Beirut, which, according to Claude Challe's liner notes, is now on the "cutting-edge of today's nightlife." Challe, who has also introduced Buddha Beats to Western dance floors, describes R.E.G.'s sound as "heavily spiced and perfumed music," and a few titles from the CD ("Harem," "Passion," "Piece of Heaven") say it all. CHARLES MUDEDE

**** 50 Cent *** fifty cents ** 50¢ * $0.50