Hip hop is in crisis, what we need is a new soldier to rise from ghetto streets to tell it like it really is, someone to do justice to the legacy of NWA and… well stop if you’ve heard this one before. It certainly feels like this isn’t the first time I’ve sat down to write this review. Indeed, it seems like I can hardly escape Eminem, 50 Cent, Obie Trice or the rest these days. So are we to hope that The Game actually is capable of offering something different? The signs aren’t good.
Jayceon Taylor’s route to music is the now familiar one of a broken home, drug dealing and finally getting shot, but here for once is a rapper who seems able to see beyond the cliché. Despite the preponderance of guns, gangs and girls, there are enough moments to suggest that he might be worthy of all the hyperbole. Kanye West’s razor sharp production job on ‘Dreams’ offers a nice contrast to Dr Dre and 50 Cent’s more standard gangsta fare, although they too are capable of some genuinely jaw dropping moments, notably the tough urban funk of ‘Church For Thugs’.
As always some of the lyrical contradictions boggle the mind but Game finishes things on a positive note with ‘Special’ (an ode to his girlfriend) and a touching account of the birth of his son. A timely rebirth of hip hop cool? Quite possibly. If someone like The Game can find salvation then maybe the genre might just too.