A black-marketeer turned instant hip-hop icon, 50 Cent’s market capitalization is now well into the millions. His Get Rich or Die Trying (Interscope) — a debut album watered with the blood of his aborted 2000 album Power of the Dollar (aborted, that is, when he was shot nine times at close range, after which Columbia dropped him) — is the year’s biggest pop-music sensation; it sold nearly 900,000 copies in its first four days of release. Last Tuesday at Avalon, 50 Cent played what is likely to be one of his last small-venue shows for some time. The DJ ended every song with a sampled gunshot exclamation, and every time, the gunshot failed to fell him.

Not that his posse were taking any chances. 50 Cent and his G-Unit crew took the stage wearing matching basketball jersies, but they quickly stripped them off to reveal matching bulletproof vests. (Soon 50 stripped this off too, getting down to bare, hard, tattoo’d muscle.) Many men wish death on him — have mercy on me, he asks, have mercy when my heart turns cold. At Avalon, he delivered these lines, from "Many Men," while standing atop a stack of PA speakers, as befits a man on top of the world. God will not speak to him, he confides in the song: the Lord is silent on 50’s behalf. But someone must have been in his corner when the assassins came to pump him full of lead. For here he is, on stage: not a superman, but a well-equipped mortal. Loveless. Fearless. Alone — in principle if not in fact. His mouth barely moves. His voice is monotonous; it will not change. It will not deviate from the most direct path; it owns the path, and if monotony lieth there, monotony better watch its motherfucking step.

On the eve of a kingmaking blockbuster summer tour, another star might’ve made short work of a club date. But 50 chose the high road: he showed up on time and, without subjecting the rabid, sold-out audience to even a single distraction (no undercooked opening acts, no introductory posse-member product spotlights), blasted through more than a dozen of his hits with the air of a seasoned performer. Early on he teased the crowd with the prospect of his chart-topping "In da Club," but he held off until he’d run through "Wanksta," the Ja Rule–dissing "I Smell Pussy," "High All the Time," "Many Men," his verse from a remix of Missy’s "Work It," and "What Up Gangsta?", which got the biggest response of the evening. And when he was given an excuse to end the show on a sour note, he rose above it. There was a brief altercation at the side of the stage; someone shouted something about Source magazine co-owner Ray "Benzino" Scott, who’s been engaged in a brutal war of words with Eminem. 50’s posse threatened to chase the assailant into the crowd, but the star cleared them from the stage and tried to diffuse the controversy. The final gunshot was simply the one that followed his last song.