In the end, it wasn't even close.

While 50 didn't exactly pull Jocelyn Coulon numbers, this has still got to hurt.

It takes me back to the second part of what McNutt Against The Music emailed me last week:

"...maybe its just that I consider Kanye West probably the most genuinely interesting pop star of our time, and as such a showdown with a hip-hop caricature like 50 Cent makes this a fight worth getting charged up about."

Kanye's crushing of 50 Cent at the cash registers over the last six days is probably going to have more read into it than even the aforementioned byelection in Outremont. And hey, I wish we could reach some grand conclusion about the future of hip hop—or even popular music generally—based on Kanye's victory, because I loathe the 50 Cent persona. I hear Curtis Jackson is a smart, hard-working guy who's quick to smile and easy to get along with; but the 50 Cent guy he plays on record is a douche.

Really, though, these numbers probably aren't all that meaningful in the end. All they tell me is that if you're going to play a stock character (and whatever argument you'd like to advance for his skills, or the number of bullets he's taken, 50 is a stock character, a cardboard-cutout thug), you're unlikely to hold the public's attention as long as somebody a little more original will, and if you want to baffle that your songs better be tight. 50's weren't. With the exception of "I Get Money," which even I love unabashedly, Curtis comes off pretty lifeless after a week of listening.Though he likes the record more than I do, Breihan is on the mark about 50's formula.

Kanye just had catchier songs. Aside from the fact that his bipolar brat shtick is weirdly fascinating to me (and presumably to others), he captured the zeitgeist perfectly in a summer that Daft Punk owned, he served up the ultimate instance of this weird self-eviscerating thing that he does (via a viral video, no less), and then last week he dropped what will surely be the single you can't (and won't want to) get away from this fall.

Something else McNutt wrote me last week: "When I heard that [the HMV promotion] involved buying one album and getting the other for free, I was appalled. I mean, this isn't about sitting on the fence. This is about picking a side: 50 Cent or Kanye West. You can't buy both! And it was then that I realized that my cynical criticism had given way and I was a willing participant in the hype."

Yeah, true. It was fun though, wasn't it? Feeling like we were having a referendum on the future of pop music? When I bought Graduation, they told me I could have a copy of Curtis for free. I told them I didn't want it. I was casting my vote for Kanye.

Yup. I'm that lame, though it was self-aware. Sach at Oh Word skewered guys like me perfectly in his capsule review of Graduation last week: "If you buy one overblown, overhyped, overrated rap record this week, make sure it’s the one by the guy talking about his clothes and money, NOT the one with the guy talking about his guns and money. The future of our Hip Hop depends on it."