50 Cent is huge, in more than one sense: a muscle-bound, scarred and tattooed totem of machismo. When, inevitably, his shirt comes off, lingering images of his rippling torso are projected onto enormous screens. He's also a multi-million selling rapper and the nominal head of a nascent empire.

All his lieutenants in the self-styled "G-Unit family" are in Glasgow tonight, making a near-interminable series of appearances before and during his set. This kind of hip-hop is all about the franchise, but they're a dismal bunch, mostly without even the chutzpah to be made in their patron's bluff image. You wonder how Olivia, the only female presence, feels in a world where a woman is little more than a scantily clad rump to be shaken at a camera.

The sound is that staple of bad live hip-hop - thud and blether, punctuated with explosions and tasteful gunshots, not that 50 Cent, the Rasputin of rap - shot nine times and still standing - would be in any way perpetuating the idea that violence is glamorous.

When you can actually hear him above the barking of whoever else is onstage, 50 Cent's flow is less than impressive, little better than those much-maligned MCs who used to grace cheesy euro-dance hits. "Make some noise!" comes the repeated cry from the stage, as if the lumpen entourage were collectively some kind of defective ego in need of constant external reassurance. And the crowd, almost entirely white, a thousand unwitting Ali Gs straight outta the Gorbals, comply.

· At Nottingham Arena on Tuesday (0870 121 0123) and touring.