Opening with a Bang

Our culture’s universal short attention span doesn’t leave much time for entertainers to get the spotlight on themselves. Lack of quality be damned in the music world, there’s a flood of people ready to take your spot if you don’t wow audiences quick enough.

That’s why a quality opening track on an album is of utmost importance. I don’t consider myself one of those people with ADD tendencies who aren’t going to check out an entire album if the first couple tracks don’t delight the eardrums. But a slam dunk of an opener helps set the tone for the album. If it’s a debut album, it can even set the tone for an artist’s career.

With that in mind, here's the first installment of Opening with a Bang, a series that will look and pick apart some of the most memorable album openers we've enshrined in our album and MP3 collections. Since we’re not stepping out of the hip-hop scene, let’s go with the criteria where “opener” refers to the first actual song on the album. Otherwise, we’d be talking about the best second tracks out there.



50 Cent: "What Up Gangsta" - 50 didn’t need much of an introduction by time his commercial debut Get Rich or Die Tryin’ hit the racks in February 2003. He’d burnt up the mixtape circuit for several years, carving a bit of a niche by verbally attacking several of his peers. Eminem included 50’s single “Wanksta” on the soundtrack for the 2002 8 Mile. And the lead single on Get Rich, “In da Club” had become the song of the young year.

But for those who were still late to the party, Get Rich’s opening song, “What Up Gangsta” shared the anatomy of what would become the blueprint for the majority of Mr. Jackson’s songs: gritty, unapologetic lyrics spread over a tough-as-nails beat. In a way, the song is everything that has prevented 50’s career from evolving. But without the five-plus years of retrospect, this opener remains something of a statement. 50’s trademark delivery of lines such as “They say I walk around like got an "S" on my chest / Naw, that's a semi-auto, and a vest on my chest / I try not to say nothing, the DA might want to play in court / But I'll hunt or duck a nigga down like it's sport” remove any ambiguity for novice listeners just what this New York native is all about.