So is an Eminem collaboration the only thing that might tempt The Game out of retirement? I know that I can hold my own and I definitely wouldn’t get killed on my own shit.” I would love the chance of getting to go back in with Eminem being at the top of my game and being who I am now. “At that time I was starstruck,” he admits, “even though I would see him every other day because we were both signed to Aftermath. Marshall Mathers featured on ‘We Ain’t’, a defiant track that appeared on ‘The Documentary’ and on which The Game exclaimed, “Get Dre on the phone quick – tell him Em just killed me on my own shit!” The only rapper that is still around and has that skillset and is still at the top of their game is Lil Wayne.” His longevity – just the fact that he’s been around so long. He is complimentary about Eminem, too, who surprise-released his 11th album ‘Music To Be Murdered By’ just days after our interview: “The thing I admire most about Eminem is his will to stay at the top of his game. As soon as I get into one artist, this one goes to jail, this one comes up, I like this one, then this one fades out, this new guy comes out…” Yet he’s confused by certain aspects of contemporary hip-hop: “The only con to it is that there’s so many of them – how do you appreciate them? It’s like they replace each other every fucking day. All of these kids are getting amazing opportunities to show that they’re great and have the talent to add great additions to what is already an amazing genre.” “Any time there’s an entity that allows underground artists and new artists to make a name for themselves, that’s amazing. “I don’t have any hate for anybody bettering their lives,” he says. He insists on ‘The Code’ : “I ain’t got nothin’ against new hip hop / I fuck with all you n*ggas.” On his last album, ‘Kamikaze’, the then-45-year-old Eminem poured scorn on the current crop of rappers, such as Lil Pump and Lil Yachty, who found fame on SoundCloud.
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Now a father of three, The Game has avoided the fate that can befall older artists, and doesn’t romanticise his own heyday at the expense of emerging talent. Everybody he’s put to the forefront is a fucking superstar.” You find your Snoop Doggs, Eminems, 50 Cents and The Games and Kendrick Lamars. Dre, and become a hip-hop mogul, recruiting and producing new talent through his own label, Prolific Records. Instead he’s resolved to follow in the footsteps of his mentor, Dr. My kids are getting older and they’re more active in their life. These days, man, I don’t have that time no more. There’s a lot of moving pieces to put together the quality of music. “It takes a lot of energy, time and love to put together these classic albums. “I been in the game a little while, man,” he bellows down the phone.
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He sounds in awe at the transportive power of hip-hop, and faces his own frailty on the elegiac ‘West Side’: “Ain’t no ‘S’ on my chest… Born in the trenches with the crack.”Ī month before its release, The Game revealed on Instagram that ‘Born 2 Rap’ would his “last album”. Both a victory lap and a clear-eyed look back on a storied career, it weaves classic samples – such as Junior M.A.F.I.A.’s ‘Get Money’ – around hard-won observations from an elder statesman of rap. The 25-track record cleverly combines the rapper’s trademark West Coast soul with a more modern trap sound. The milestone clearly put him in a reflective mood, coinciding with the release of ‘Born 2 Rap’, his blockbuster ninth album. Taylor, once known for rapping bruising truths with youthful abandon, turned 40 last year. To go from Compton to Calabasas, you have to cultivate the kind of career that The Game – aka Jayceon Terrell Taylor – has enjoyed since his smash 2005 debut album ‘The Documentary’, which featured the era-defining 50 Cent collaboration ‘Hate It Or Love It’. And on that day, I moved out of Compton and got me a condo in Beverly Hills.”Īlmost 20 years later, the veteran rapper is speaking from his home in Calabasas, the starry Los Angeles suburb that counts Kanye West and Kim Kardashian among its residents. A bullet hole was in the car seat where his head would have been. “The thing that changed my life was when a bullet went through my son’s car seat and I was just about to go into the house and get him and put him in the car. “I was fuckin’ five times Platinum and still getting in shoot-outs in my neighbourhood,” he booms. The Game recalls the precise moment he vowed to get out of Compton.