Why You Hate The Game? That question is the title of the last track on the new album by the Game, the petulant hip-hop star from Compton, Calif. He’s not really looking for answers, but answers aren’t hard to find. Why would anyone hate this guy? Well, maybe because he’s an overbearing braggart, a tireless name-dropper, a mealy-mouthed provocateur, a sluggish rapper, a witless wag and a shameless sycophant. For a start.
And yet, barring some last-minute surprise, he has made the best hip-hop album of the year. It’s called “Doctor’s Advocate” (Geffen), and it comes out on Tuesday. (Although pirated copies surfaced last week.) And it puts the Game’s booming voice and bad attitude front and center. He’s needy in the worst way: desperate to be loved, respected, feared. And instead of hiding that neediness, he flaunts it; the result is a riveting portrait of the artist as a wannabe.
Let’s start with that title, which is either a heartfelt tribute, a desperate ploy, a veiled insult or — most likely — some combination of the three. In 2005, when the Game released his major-label debut, “The Documentary,” he was a protégé of both 50 Cent and Dr. Dre, the producer who helped invent the sound of Los Angeles hip-hop. Then 50 Cent and the Game began their noisy feud. It often seemed they were vying for Dr. Dre’s attention: The Game claimed that Dr. Dre would contribute to his second album; 50 Cent swore the producer would not.
50 Cent was right: Dr. Dre stayed away. But the Game decided to forge ahead anyway with “Doctor’s Advocate”; it’s hard to think of another rapper who would name an album after someone who declined to work on it. And in the extraordinary title track, the Game apologizes to his childhood hero, sort of. The first verse begins with a rapper who sounds as if he’s about to cry:
Dre, I ain’t mean to turn my back on you
But I’m a man, and sometimes a man do what he gotta do
Remember? I’m from Compton, too
I saw you and Eazy in ’em, so I started wearing khaki suits
I was 12, smoking chronic in ’92
Those extremes — the plaintive “Remember?”; the defiant “I’m a man” — echo through the verses. And though neither is totally convincing, it’s hard to tell where the Game’s bad faith stops. Is he merely pretending to be contrite? Or is he merely pretending to be defiant? Or, somehow, both? The skits that frame the song make it even harder to unravel. (The Game is drunk and depressed; Busta Rhymes tries to rouse him.)
The Game is clearly obsessed with the rappers who came before him, and it’s an obsession that demands a tally. In the course of 16 songs, he makes reference to no less than 44 different hip-hop stars, including two named Ice (Cube and -T), three named Lil (Jon, Kim and Wayne) and two named Young (Jeezy and M.C.). And no one comes up more often than Dr. Dre, whose name finds its way into nearly every song. By album’s end he has been invoked about 30 times; the absent mentor is everywhere.
Despite Dr. Dre’s absence, this album sounds much more like an Los Angeles album than its predecessor. “Too Much” has a typically smooth sung hook by Nate Dogg and a spot-on beat by Scott Storch, who knows how to make a track sound Dre-ish. (You’ll need a fluid bass line, some spare keyboard notes, some cinematic strings, an impossibly hard backbeat.) Hi-Tek produced the slow-rolling “Ol’ English,” a tribute to the Game’s favorite malt liquor and his favorite typeface, too. Even will.i.am, from the Black Eyed Peas, gets in on the act: he produced “Compton,” which lovingly recreates the menacing sound of old-fashioned gangsta rap.
The Game’s flow couldn’t possibly be described as nimble. (Neither could his wordplay: “Get stretched out like a limo”?) But he has a terrific voice, bassy and raspy, and there’s something enthralling about the way he pushes through to the end of the line, often falling slightly behind the beat, and sometimes straining to cram in extra words. He knows the value of negative space, so he doesn’t fill the songs with chatter and noise; he clearly loves the sound of sharp consonants and hoarse vowels over a half-empty beat. Compared with slick Southern rappers or wordy New York rappers, the Game is a minimalist, a true believer in the power of simplicity.
That simplicity has often been a hindrance on mixtapes, where you can find many of his vituperative but dull rhymes about 50 Cent. But here, the stripped-down approach serves him well. He knows how to reduce a violent story to its bare essentials: “Used to think that I was hard, so I stole my brother’s Glock/And that’s the day my life changed, ’cause that night, he got shot/Killed by another Crip over his Rolex watch.” It’s an appalling little story, but you can detect a hint of bravado in his voice, the same bravado, perhaps, that makes a boy steal a gun. If this album is a little bit less fun than “The Documentary,” it’s also a lot more memorable.
In hip-hop flawed protagonists rule; no one wants to hear a (purely) good guy rap. But the Game has an unusual flaw: his problem is that he really wants to be a hip-hop star, wants it so badly he can’t disguise it. He probably knows it’s a bad idea to call himself the “West Coast Rakim,” or to boast, “I’m B.I.G., I’m Cube, I’m Nas, I’m ’Pac,” or to obsequiously praise Snoop Dogg in nearly every song. He probably knows that thinly veiled criticisms of other rappers won’t earn him the respect he wants. (At one point he raps, “I don’t need no ‘Encore,’ no claps, no cheers,” alluding to the Jay-Z song.) He probably knows it’s embarrassing to release a whole CD about a guy who doesn’t seem to be returning his calls. But he is doing it anyway.
You don’t have to admire the Game’s approach to love this album. Even the Game’s many detractors may find themselves falling for these trunk-rattling tracks, whether they admit it or not. But the more you listen to these rhymes, the less unfathomable they seem. If the Game sounds too insecure, too greedy for admiration, too worried about how he’s perceived, well, maybe he’s not the only one. In other words, you might never grow to love that scowling poseur on the cover. But you just might recognize him.
