ARTIST: The Game
ALBUM: The Documentary 2
LABEL: Blood Money & Entertainment One Music
RELEASE DATE: October 9, 2015
Blood Red
Written by Silas Valentino
There are those who simply rap about the hip-hop game and then there are those who actually embody it. For Jayceon Taylor, or appropriately nicknamed The Game, there’s no differentiating between the content that makes its way into his rhymes and the content of his morning breakfast. It’s all the same for the 36-year-old rapper and he’s keen on keeping it 100.
In the week leading up to Christmas 2015, The Game made multiple headlines for various discrepancies: A judge ordered him to pay $3,000 to fellow rapper 40 Glocc for a 2012 scuffle that ended with The Game brandishing his weapon, then he was sued for failing to perform at the Kentucky Derby Festival last May for not being listed as the headliner and finally the Compton-centric former gangbanger pleaded not guilty to punching an off-duty cop. There’s a line between hustle and flow and The Game lives on it.
To continue documenting his storied past and reigning present, The Game returns with the sequel to his 2005 debut aptly titled The Documentary 2. It’s a 19-song, 75-minute epic full of ghosts from his Christmas past, present and future with the underlining theme as this: the game is hard but not as tough as this player.
The Game is a Golden State warrior – he tosses this pun and reference to the basketball squad frequently throughout The Documentary 2 – who wears his roots on his sleeves and isn’t afraid to go to war over it. His initial 2004 hit, “How We Do,” featured his East Coast counterpart 50 Cent. Both rappers rasp with that syrupy flow and have the gun shot wounds to prove their street credibility. But since The Game entered, well, the game, he’s been involved in a feud with 50 Cent that’s spawned countless attacks on both sides. During the smooth retrospective track “Made In America,” The Game admits “We all make mistakes look what happened to me and 50” offering a moment of peace – but he isn’t ready to let bygones be. He immediately (and cleverly) ends that line by cutting to the next song “Hashtag” which jumpstarts with a Little John-esk (though actually rapper Jelly Roll) exclamation of the word “egos!” During “Hashtag,” The Game compares the breakup of The Beatles with the breakup of G-Unit due to unnecessary egos. It’s almost as if The Game said he’s “sorry… but not sorry” and just like that the Cold War between 50 and The Game battles on.
Like any good documentary, this one includes a cast of characters who pop in to provide their insight and contribution to the overall narrative – which in this case is the life in a life of The Game. Everyone from Ice Cube, Diddy, Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre to Kanye West, Drake, will.i.am and Future have their say in The Documentary 2. (Least we forget that during The Game’s 2011, Tyler, The Creator-featured hit “Martians vs. Goblins,” the OFWGKTA frontman boasted: “That shit was expected like Jayceon whenever he name-drops.”)
The most powerful feature on the album comes from the current Compton CEO Kendrick Lamar. The track “On Me” begins with a drive-by shooting between two gangbangers that seems to galvanize the content and inspirations heard on Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly. Over a jungle beat with a head-swaying rhythm, The Game and K-Dot trade versus regarding Compton life where they were “Freestylin’ to them Chronic instrumentals, no pens and pencils.” It’s a pleasant moment of friendship and getting each other’s backs amid all the bellicosity of The Documentary 2.
Ten years separate the two documentaries and countless altercations lie within the decade for The Game. He’s prone to trouble but he’s also a street-made converter of woes into flows. The game isn’t rigged – it’s rugged. The same could be said for The Game.