Review: Game, "The R.E.D. Album"

The R.E.D. Album
Game
DGC/Interscope
08.23.11

From a purely sociological point of view, it may be a good time to be a West Coast gangbanger, what with California's infrastructure falling apart, but from a cultural point of view, it's a terrible time to be rapping about it. Game (he's dropped the "The," the kind of post-fame alteration that's usually a sign of desperation for a MC) has been fighting to drop his latest joint longer than Obama's been in office. He's rolled off three mixtapes, collaborated with everyone under the sun, had his tracks passed from hand to hand, and released eight "advance" singles, all of which died on the vine, in a futile attempt to keep himself on Interscope. Dr. Dre was the main label exec behind The R.E.D. Album, largely in an attempt to keep West Coast gangsta rap on life support, but he mostly pulled out, leaving in some suspect between-track biographical narration. Game's career may be over before the President's.

In desperation, therefore, the man who saved Los Angeles from the Dirty South goes all in on his two remaining hole cards: swagger and cameos. It makes sense to an extent: back when he had a definite article, The Game was a one-man thug history book, famously absorbing every rapper he could in a six-month period in prep and lacing his flow with references to everyone who'd laid the groundwork. Back in the middle of the last decade, it played not only as a resurrection, but as a mural, as if he were being quizzed on Blood rap history before being jumped in to heavy rotation.

But in 2011, when hip-hop has faded completely into mainstream pop, The R.E.D. Album comes off like bluster. Never the best at the technical stuff, he rhymes "window" with "endo" and "Los Angeles" with "scandalous" and "cannabis" and, for some reason, "Christmas." And if the rhymes are lazy, the boasting is drenched with flop sweat. Hey! He fucked Erykah Badu! He wants to hurt Rihanna! Spiderman's a pussy! Here's how he sees his lyrical peers: "Biggie, Hov, prolly Pac, Nas." Uh-huh.

This is Game's game to lose, so it doesn't help that the beats are competent, but unsurprising -- like his shoutouts, they seem stuck in 2006. He's definitely not getting the best of Cool & Dre or Mars, who produced the bulk of R.E.D. Most of the big-name guest productions designed to create buzz for the album -- Dr. Dre, Kanye, RZA, Timbaland, Scott Storch, will.i.am -- didn't make the album cut because of their failure. And he sounds utterly lost on what should have been the one fresh track, a comic collaboration with Tyler the Creator entitled "Martians vs. Goblins."

Only when Game dials back the hardness, ironically, does he come up with something real and, better yet, unique: the R&B ballads "Hello" and "Pot of Gold," and the tender flashback "Mama Knows," specifically. But in the middle of this album-ending upswing, as DJ Premier comes to the rescue with the black anthem "Born In The Trap" and provides the rapper with the kind of lush-yet-dangerous backdrop he hasn't had for years, this happens:

Just had a daughter almost named her Katrina

If I raise her right then maybe she can take over FEMA

Spike Lee in New Orleans shooting documentaries

And Game still in Cali eating off "The Documentary"

Take him to the cemetry, I mean the cemetery

Where everybody boxed in, Refrigerator Perry

Fitting, then, that the chorus to this nonsense is about blaming Obama for everything because he's black. When you have this much trouble getting your message across, you don't deserve a second term.

Graded using the Third Eye Method:

Impact: 60. Hardcore Game fans, grab the best 10 tracks here, stick them in your player, and just let this go.  
Invention: 32. If he planned to jog in place, he should've gone all the way retro and made a NWA album. 
Integrity: 56. When the only thing at risk is your career, and your core base doesn't care about your career, where are you?