The Game - LAX

I’ll be honest here: The Game is not a very talented rapper. He may look and act the part well (Tattoos! Bullet scars! Bling!), but his rapping leaves much to be desired. Technically, he’s poor – a husky, gruff and really rather bland voice tempered with little rhythmic invention – and lyrically he’s just as bad, rapping about guns, hoes and the size of his wallet with as much originality as his one-time mentor, 50 Cent. What makes things worse is the Game’s constant name-dropping of other, better rappers – on the title track of his debut “The Documentary,” for instance, he managed to squeeze in references to almost every classic 90s hip hop album, and that was just in the chorus. He probably thought it sounded cool, but it just sounds silly – and his near-pathological hero worship makes his own emceeing weaknesses all the more glaring.

Luckily, the Game’s albums aren’t one-man affairs. Not only are his albums littered with an endless number of guest spots, but he has consistently roped in the best producers in hip hop. This means that – thank the Lord – his workmanlike flow and run-of-the-mill lyrics are usually upstaged by stellar production and the charismatic guest verses of other rappers. His first album in particular seemed more like a showcase for Dr. Dre than for the Game, and the result was one of the most enjoyable commercial rap albums of the decade.

On his third, and apparently last album “LAX,” the one thing that made his albums good – their production – falters. And that’s not all: His namedropping grows more relentless and irritating than ever before. The result is his weakest album, a glossy and flaccid affair that’s certainly not destined to become a bangin’ summer hit like his previous two LPs.

One song encapsulates “LAX”’s flaws better than any other, the late-album disaster “Never Can Say Goodbye.” As with most of the songs on “LAX,” it’s overly slick, leaning more for a slushy R&B sound than the hard-hitting gangsta style that made the Game successful in the first place. Where there used to be Dre’s crisp, infectious 808 drums, there are now breathy and never-ending guest choruses, and a layer of pop gloss thick enough to make Britney Spears balk in disbelief. But limp, hyper-commercial production is a small problem compared to the song’s main flaw, which sees the Game take his hero-worshipping to a whole new level; for not only does he rap about hip hop legends Eazy E, 2Pac and Notorious B.I.G., he actually imitates them. Yup. That’s right.

The result is so bizarre that I actually had to listen to the song twice to convince myself I wasn’t having some horrendous musical nightmare. Because as you might imagine, listening to a rapper like the Game imitating emcees as talented as Biggie and Pac is one of the most painful things you’ll ever experience; yes, utterly laughable on one level, but just plain wrong on most. Particularly blasphemous is how utterly caricatured and one-dimensional his impressions are. What made Biggie, Pac and Eazy such icons was their complexity, their constant vacillation between thuggish aggression and raw vulnerability. All the Game does, however, is recreate a crude gangsta cliché of the rappers – and even that he does badly.

While “Never Can Say Goodbye” is certainly the worst song on the album – and one of the most downright ridiculous hip hop tracks I’ve ever heard in my life – it exemplifies well what makes “LAX” such a failure. Overly glossy production drowns more than two thirds of the album in pop gloop, from the Ne-Yo-featuring “Gentleman’s Affair” to the soft-core slush of “Touchdown,” and almost every song is littered with references to hip hop legends. In the album’s first verse alone, he mentions Suge Knight, Jay-Z and Scarface, all figures with more charisma in their pinky finger than the Game has in his whole body.

Still, despite being a considerable disappointment, “LAX” certainly isn’t worthless. Like any major rap album, there are enough high-profile guests and producers to guarantee a handful of notable tracks. The Ice Cube-featuring “State of Emergency,” for instance, is a shining example of what made the Game a platinum-selling phenomenon back in 2005. It’s a furious, high-octane adrenalin-rush, religiously conforming to the gangsta rap handbook, but also a reminder of what made that genre great in the first place. It’s not meant to be headphone music, and you’re certainly not meant to sit at home alone decoding the complex rhymes and metaphors – this is music to pump your fists to, and the anthemic chorus and incendiary production of “State of Emergency” provide more of an energy rush in four minutes than more respectable, intellectual rappers like Mos Def can conjure up in four songs. The Kanye West/Common collaboration “Angel,” as you’d expect, is also well worth listening to, with a silken-smooth Common guest spot and funky, early Dre-inspired production from West which differs from his usual sound.

If you have to download one song though, make it the album’s third single “My Life,” fuelled by an infectious Lil Wayne chorus as well as by the most introspective and interesting lyrics on the album. I mean, they’re hardly groundbreaking or anything, but they make the Game appear like a three-dimensional human being rather than a walking talking dictionary of gangsta rap clichés. Particularly memorable is his protest that he’s been “hated on so much / “The Passion of the Christ” needs a sequel.” Now, if he could come up with angsty, provocative lyrics like that all the time, “LAX” would be a very different album – but the sober reflection of “My Life” is soon cut short by the following track “Money,” a leaden celebration of cash which might be interesting if it hadn’t been done like a MILLION times before.

But who am I fooling anyway? It’s not like anyone buys the Game’s new album looking for originality. People buy Game albums for great production, a stellar guest-list, and the inevitable string of hit singles – and it’s mainly on those criteria that I’m judging “LAX” a failure.


"LAX" released 22 August, 2008 by Geffen Records.
Images courtesy of Geffen Records and Empire Online.
Published in the Daily Princetonian.