His hits didn’t come much bigger than this. They got better, though…

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[5.71]

Mark Sinker: Back when Stanley Crouch was busy establishing himself head thug-critic in charge — to which end he decked Harry Allen in the Village Voice office — he was also road-testing the notion of hiphop as present-day minstrelsy: black kids adopting roles steeped in ancient white cliche, for youthful white consumption. Now Crouch — whatever else he is — isn’t a fool, and there’s potent rhetorical torque here, for many out there if rarely (to his chagrin?) for the young: the idea that the entire genre is self-hating false consciousness, soup to nuts. The argument’s unravelment comes from an odd corner: the fact that minstrels — whatever else they were — were performers, and some of them were world-class performers. Reducing the act to the pleasance or otherwise of the persona-as-social-symbol — well, OK, it’s certainly true some of hiphop’s performers are also not always doing much more than this, either. And sometimes, you know, they are. I don’t see you have to like 50 Cent, let alone admire him, to be moved by this: the contrast of Nate’s near-sociopathic smoothness of confidence and Fiddy’s tentative flattened stutter, the little stammered glitch in the guitar, the gradual turn of the song from casual low-key braggadoccio to introspective uncertainty…
[8]

Al Shipley: Easily one of the weakest Nate features, certainly the worst of his megahits. And I can’t help but chalk it up to the fact that it was recorded before 50 signed to Aftermath, presumably with someone else originally singing the generic hook and idiotic Green Eggs And Ham bridge (“would you love me in a Bentley/ would you love me in a bus?”). Nate was at his best when you couldn’t imagine any other voice tackling the material.
[2]

Martin Skidmore: I always thought this was a big hit simply by it being the follow-up to the great “In Da Club”. It’s kind of weak – Dre called it “sappy” – and 50 Cent’s stiff rapping doesn’t suit the style.
[5]

Alfred Soto: And no answers.
[3]

Anthony Easton: This is the central irony–that they expect women to be availble, emotionally, sexually, personally, regardless of the situation, up to and including prison. The text is directed towards women, but fails to absorb their voices — the rhetorical strategy of constant questions, while not waiting for answers is symbolic of the one sided discourse that excludes women.
[7]

Asher Steinberg: I don’t expect anyone to agree, but to me this is a towering achievement of turn-of-the-century pop-rap. 50’s sing-song delivery poses and answers questions melodically, while Nate, for once, turns in a hook in complete service to a song’s ideas and structure.
[9]

Jonathan Bradley: This is terribly lazy for someone ostensibly so insecure. “21 Questions” would be more tolerable had 50 not since run his career into the ground with lesser and even more disingenuous version of this loverman bullshit. Nate is pretty superfluous here; Curtis could sing the hook and the phrasing sounds like it’s his voice being imitated. Not without charm, but it leaves me feeling like a fat kid who was promised chocolate cake but given carrot.
[6]