Westcoast savior

LAX
written by 4bars

Let me start out by saying that I think The Game is a good rapper. I hate that I can’t hate him, though, because he continues to make good music. I think he name drops WAYYY too much (I don’t think he’s gone one song without mentioning Dr. Dre, either blatantly or subliminally) and has some questionable aspects of his character. Recently, however, I talked to one of my boys who is from out west and is a huge hip hop head and he presented me with an interesting perspective: (“shit,…”) Fellow rappers, particularly older or lesser known rappers, appreciate that Game shouts them out because it keeps them or makes them relevant and they love him for it. I never really considered this and I think that Game does it partly for this reason, but it still doesn’t change my thoughts on the name dropping, although it does make it a little less annoying knowing that somebody does actually appreciate and benefit from it.

Now that you know how I feel about The Game, we can talk about his latest and according to him, his last album. LAX is a very good hip hop album, my two favorite songs: “Angel” and “Dope Boys”. “Angel” samples the legendary yet tragic Gil Scott Heron (who Kanye frequents) song “Angel Dust” which he made when he was really struggling with narcotics. A good friend of mine’s dad, who is musically informed, remarked after hearing the song, “you little niggas have no respect”, to which I laughed a whole lot but understood where he was coming from. Nonetheless, it is an awesome song. “Dope Boys” is the track that I’ve almost crashed my car listening to on a couple of occasions cause I’m bobbin my head and mean mugging so damn hard that I lose sight of the road for brief periods of time. The beat is incredible but the live drums courtesy of Travis Barker really put the song on another level. There are songs that I could’ve done without on the album (Gentleman’s Affair, Touchdown, & the DMX prayer sessions) but I just went back and listened again and it is a very, very good album.

Not only has The Game produced another really good album (I think his first two were very good as well) but he has almost single handedly held down the West Coast hip hop scene, nationally, for the majority of his career. Clearly Snoop and Dr. Dre will always be the names most synonymous with hip hop from California but as far as traditional hip hop goes, Game has held the west coast down (I would usually quote a clever Game line, but I don’t know his shit like that). While I have my differences with him as a “person” due to his constant fits of self doubt, suspect character decisions, comments, authenticity questions, etc. I think he’s a very good artist and he has once again delivered a really good album. The sound of the album is great, it’s what we’ve come to know as that west coast sound but remaining fresh and relevant at the same time. I talk a lot of shit about Game cause I truly think he’s “playing thug” but when it comes to making a good hip hop album, this mf is 3 for 3. Bars