Rapstreet boys 50 Cent and the Game diss and tell BY NICK SYLVESTER

Yawn. Before all the bread and circuses, I had this great stolen bit about how G-Unit were the prefab Backstreet Boys of rap — a test-tube crew, boy-band cosmo, geographically and stylistically diverse but with no overarching local-crew character. Now, with all the guns and disses that have taken place between the Unit’s two biggest stars, 50 Cent and the Game, including a shooting allegedly related to the feud that took place outside NYC’s Hot 97 radio station in late February followed by a well-timed "G-Unity" happy ending, shit’s way too off the top rope for Nick Carter jokes. G-Unit are more Wrestlemania than ever.

Forget all the corporate conspiracies, too — any 13-year-old from Newton can tell you that the stage was set for new albums by both 50 Cent and the Game to sell hard with or without Hot 97 fireworks. (The Game’s The Documentary debuted at #1 with close to 600,000 sales the first week after its release on January 18; 50’s new The Massacre moved 1.1 million units after debuting at #1 the first week of March.) The bigger question is this: outside the WWE, what’s the last time such a massively unimportant feud occurred between two jacked dudes with stage names, shifty alliances, and self-mythologies that are way more entertaining than their actual skills? When did bullet count become more important than sales, and rapthenticity more compelling than solid rhymes?

The Answer (somehow not the name of a G-Unit rapper) is all purple hazy. But G-Unit, if they haven’t contributed to that shift, are certainly the kings of it at this point: put a good beat and an indubitably rags-to-riches story behind a rapper and kids don’t care what he says.

Check the Game. From the artist name to the album name (The Documentary, on Aftermath) to the rap-industry filosofizin intro ("The quality of your living depends entirely on your ability to play the game"), has there ever been a release whose very form — the faceless collaborative rap blockbuster — is so openly its content? Game is maybe the most unwittingly meta rapper ever.

And that’s assuming he even considers himself anything more than the rap carpetbagger he is. "I’ve only been rapping for a year and a half," he says on "Don’t Need Your Love." Dude’s about making money before he claims to have any purely artistic interest in hip-hop. Rap is his stepping stone, and the Game is willing to play along in order to get rich: "The hell if I care, I’m just here to get my cash/Bougie ass bitches, you can kiss my ass."

G-Unit know that local identity counts for a lot, though, and early on in The Documentary, the Game makes a point of name-dropping Compton. Even before popping the disc, we see the town name emblazoned on the back-cover art — shouldn’t we just know he’s West Coast from how he sounds and what he says? Remember, though, form’s content here, and songs like "Westside Story" exist less for the Game to wax local and more to align him with previous West Coast successes — namely, N.W.A, Dr. Dre, and Snoop. Only on The Documentary could the story of how Game "jumped on Dre’s back" be something to brag about.

Underscoring the empty ring of his Compton claims, Game doesn’t pit West versus East — it’s a bad business decision to hate on potential collaborators, and anyway, nobody cares about the coast rivalry anymore. "Westside!" peppers the disc, but in terms of style, Game is "Rapside," an all-yous-my-heroes sponge whose identity lies in his vacuousness, his lack of identity. The title track chorus is one big name-dropping pastiche: "I’m ready to die/Without a reasonable doubt/Smoke chronic and hittin/Doggy style before I go out/Until they sign my death certificate/All eyez on me/I’m still at it, illmatic/And that’s the documentary."

Familiarity is essential to the Game. The Documentary is a complete blueprint for making a commercially successful gangsta rap album by distilling the essences of the most critically and commercially successful gangsta rap albums of all time. G-Unit have bottled the rapper as thug, and anyone who hasn’t sold drugs, gangbanged, and spent time in a hospital with gun wounds just sounds unconvincing. Game knows well his story is none too new: " . . . and your Jesus piece is sim-u-lar to Biggie’s/And your life story’s sim-u-lar to Fifty’s." At least he knows his history.

When rap personalities blur, beats bear the burden. Speaking to both Game’s vacuity and the strength of the production on The Documentary is the fact that he used no fewer than 17 different producers for the disc’s 18 tracks — from Scott Storch to Cool & Dre to Timbo to Kanye to Dr. Dre to Hi-Tek to Swizz Beatz. The shit pops, and the variety distracts from Game’s huffy flow — the best thing G-Unit could ever do for the guy. Game’s along for the ride, a face to pull things together, and as long as he gets a check, the whole thing’s fine by him.