50 Cent

Hustler's ambition or gangsta's therapy? Fiddy's heart's on his sleeve: "I need you I need you to hate me," he admits, his doom-low voice betraying his existential dread by the second. "Niggas around me so cold my heart done froze up." After flipping 32 hot bars of drug metaphor — his best lyrics of '05 since the Game and Mobb Deep guest spots — he hammers on his no-exit manifesto: "I hope to find the thing that's in my life/So I hustle." The haunting oohs and bass line of the sample "I Need You" by Frankie Beverly & Maze emote where a hustler can't.