It is January 2003 – many years before I began researching popular music professionally – and I’m flicking around the music channels on TV. Disillusioned by the usual paint by numbers chart fodder and ready to call it a day, I chance upon the video for a new song called In Da Club by a rapper called 50 Cent.
The video shows a van driving through a desert on its way to the “Shady / Aftermath Artist Development Centre”, where lab coated rap legends Eminem and Dr. Dre observe a “patient” through a Perspex screen.
