Rapper 50 Cent Promoted In Israel As 1.89 Shekel

“We always go the extra 1.60934 kilometers for our entertainment partners.”

Tel Aviv, July 13 – An Israeli entertainment marketing contractor is facing confusion from fans and anger from its overseas client after converting rap artist 50 Cent’s name into the equivalent value in shekels to announce his planned appearance.

Curtis Jackson III, who uses the stage name 50 Cent, is planning a concert tour that includes a show in Tel Aviv next February. His promotion company engaged Tel-Aviv-based Metrix Entertainment as a partner to advertise the appearance and attract concertgoers. However, Metrix’s staff not only translated most of the promotional material for the Israeli market, it converted Jackson’s stage name into the current equivalent value in Israeli currency, at slightly under 2 shekels. Metrix now faces a lawsuit and hefty potential fines for the failure.

Jackson, originally from Queens, New York, achieved hip-hop fame over the last decade and a half, winning multiple prestigious music and entertainment awards and successfully nurturing friendships with influential hip-hop personalities such as Eminem and Dr. Dre, with whom he has collaborated on numerous projects. 50 Cent has yet to perform in Israel, and the hip-hop market here is not as well developed as in the US, but his promoters saw significant potential for cultivating a following in Israel. Cosmopolitan Israeli tastes in entertainment combine with a subconscious Israeli need to adopt almost anything that comes from the US – with the notable exception of American Jews – leading Jackson’s marketing team to explore contacts with an Israeli agent to handle local marketing and promotion tasks in the context of a four-month world tour next winter and spring.

Metrix, which has competently managed gigs for other overseas artists, promised a thorough review of its practices. “We always go the extra 1.60934 kilometers for our entertainment partners,” said company spokesman Milu Lee. “If a complete overhaul of our methods proves necessary, we will not hesitate to undertake such an endeavor. We want to be properly prepared for all of our contracts. After all, 28.3495 grams of prevention is worth 453.592 grams of trouble.”

The fiasco marks the first time in decades that an Israeli marketing firm has improperly translated or converted foreign terminology. The 1996 Kevin Costner film Tin Cup was billed in Israel as “Tin 236.588 ml,” but perhaps oddly, performed reasonably well at the box office. Similarly, some automatic translation software renders the epithet “Eurotrash” as “NIS 4.17 trash” in Hebrew, also without adversely affecting the derogatory tone.