^ This dame is the only thing you’ll remember from this film.

What do you do when you’re a bored millionaire who isn’t selling records like you used to and has to resort to cheap stunts to keep his name in the news? You make another shitty movie, that’s what. Unlike 8 Mile Part 2 Get Rich Or Die Trying, where 50 Cent was able to convince Oscar winning director Jim Sheridan to try and deliver something beyond the typical ‘hood’ movie, this time around he’s gone back to basics. That’s right, your boy Curtis Jackson wrote, directed and starred in this future classic of modern cinema…

If you wanted to write the most played-out, cliche-ridden script for a rapsploitation flick, what would some of the key ingredients have to be? Let’s start with a promising basketball player, who has his dreams of making it to the pro cut short short by a knee injury, shall we? Now all we need is some kind of motivation for this kid to enter a life of crime…how about his moms gets killed while she’s buying some milk? Perfect! Right, the next thing we need is someone to show off his caring and sharing side…would a genius-level academic whiz-kid younger brother do the trick? Bingo! OK, so now that out hero has no choice but to become the ultimate hitman, what could possibly be his weakness? How about a hot broad? Boo-ya! This thing writes itself.

To be fair, this film does have it’s moments. The scene in the pool hall, which features Treach and his boy scheming on robbing Curtis’ character – Clarence – is comedy gold, as one dude checks out the dame he’s playing pool with and declares that he plans to ‘lock that bitch in my basement and donkey-fuck her for two weeks!’ Sadly, nothing in Before I Self Destruct ever reaches the level of classic ignorance achieved in Killa Season, so I’m afraid there aren’t any scenes of 50 spitting on little girls or pissing on dudes he just kicked the living shit out of. Watching Clarence in action as a hitman is also pretty amusing, as conducts public executions in broad daylight or in front of dozens of witnesses without anyone so much as calling the cops, but that’s about as good as it gets.

We also catch glimpses of a couple of sub-plots revolving around Clarence’s brother Shocka buying some protection from bullies at school while fielding scholarship offers from every Ivy League college in America (really), as well as Clarence hanging out with his boss/father figure Sean (Clifton Powell, the only decent actor in this clusterfuck), who invites him for a BBQ with the wife and later informs him that he’s slamming her with ‘10 inches of dick and balls every night’ for some bizarre reason. Also disturbing was the scene where Clarence’s girlfriend, Princess, tells him that she should have asked his 13 year-old brother if he knew what her pussy would feel like after failing to stump him with trivia questions…what kind of sicko wrote this thing again? Oh, right…

Another odd moment is early in the film when Clarence is in a car and the guy behind the wheel is bumping a 50 Cent song. The driver declares, ‘This is hot! You don’t like it?’ Clarence ignores him, and appears unimpressed with the music. Is this 50’s attempt to break the fourth wall of cinema? Regardless, if you feel like wasting 80 minutes of your worthless life on our generation’s answer to Citizen Kane, go ahead and do you. You could always play a round of ‘Where’s Lloyd Banks’, as the monotone miracle makes an uncredited cameo