The Game plays it crazy; throws back to '93
Published Nov. 14, 2006
JORDAN SARGENT
Staff Writer
Stew on The Game's rapping skills all you want, but let's get one thing straight —dude is one hell of a businessman. He's stayed atop hip-hop headlines for what seems like every week since this summer by mostly bitch-slapping his ex-mates G-Unit — whether it was ferociously pounding them on freestyles that lasted 300 bars (that's 10 straight minutes, folks) or just tossing off lazy, rehashed insults during an interview. Color him desperate or genius, but the bottom line is no one in hip-hop (save for Jay-Z) has been more talked about over the course of the past five months than The Game.
All of this posturing, though, ultimately comes down to one thing: If Doctor's Advocate flops, the joke's on The Game.
At it's worst, Doctor's Advocate aims to be a throwback West Coast record, with tracks like "California Vacation" and "Bang" aping the whiny synthesizers and plinking keyboards that are Cali touchstones. Here The Game again falls victim to the pitfalls that have dogged him in his short career. He seems to be perpetually gazing into a rearview mirror, eulogizing chronic and The Chronic, Eazy-E and Ol' E so much that he might think his album is being released Nov. 14, 1993.
I'm not penalizing The Game for confabbing the same points over nearly three-fourths of Doctor's Advocate's 18 songs; it's just that he isn't nearly a gifted enough wordsmith to make even three gripping songs about drugs, California and rims.
Where Doctor's Advocate keeps itself from totally dissipating is when The Game bares his soul. He's one of the most alluring personalities in rap — a man who's so perpetually obsessed with both his forbearers and old crew that you could imagine his bedroom looking like a "Law and Order: SVU" crime scene with newspaper clippings of 50 Cent running over posters of Dr. Dre.
His possible insanity, and probable instability, might be detrimental to his well being, but it allows him to make some of the most truly captivating songs in rap.
On "Doctor's Advocate," The Game rips his heart out of his chest and smears it all over the track, revealing his internal battle over the fact that his album lacks no contribution from his mentor Dr. Dre. He portrays himself a wrecked alcoholic, reeling from all the demons, both internally and externally, that he's been fighting. Dre's name appears so much on this album that The Game would try to buy it as a vowel on Wheel of Fortune, The song os wholly about the Doctor, but it couldn't be more calamitous: "I told you, you was like a father to me, I meant that/ Sitting here looking at my platinum plaques/ thinking what the fuck am I without a Dr. Dre track?"
Likewise, when The Game calls out his friends on "One Night" for living off him and giving nothing, not even a visit in the hospital. When he reveals that the death of Detroit rapper Proof made him think about reconciling with 50, he presents himself as the most human of rappers — a man wrecked by a constant push-pull with his image and heart.
The problem with the album though, is that his most humanizing moments can't breathe under the thick West Coast smog. The Game's long been marching to the beat of his own drum, if only he would always rap to it, too.