The Game

“Doctor’s Advocate”

(Geffen)

3 Stars



A year and a half after “The Documentary,” his overhyped-but-solid 2005 debut, The Game has returned, sans G-Unit and Dr. Dre, with “The Doctor’s Advocate,” a soul-draining experience that doesn’t deliver on the promise of his first album’s best songs.

Indeed, save for a few bright spots, this album is never more than a guilty pleasure.

The Game’s lyrical style is a straight-up rehash of the harder elements of early ’90s G-Funk, adding one element—an Eminem-esque fascination with other rappers and their feelings.

The results are decidedly mixed.

Game openly expresses his overwhelming desire to be liked and accepted by his mentor and former producer, Dr. Dre, and it weighs down the album. And by “weighs down,” I mean “sinks.”

What makes it all worse is that Dre doesn’t even appear on the album.

He takes us out of that pseudo-fantasy escapist hip-hop world where you believe everything the rapper says—he’s the greatest, he gets all the hoes, he drives a Bentley, and so on—and brings us back into the real world, where rappers are just as petty and insecure as the rest of us, often even more so.

It seems like the only reason Game made this album is so Dre would take him back, and he spends the whole album floundering around and hoping someone notices him, Dashboard Confessional-style.

At least he shelled out for some decent beats. The Reefa-produced “It’s Okay (One Blood)” has a strange, stuttering backing track. Unfortunately Game spends the whole song talking about, and often talking to, Dr. Dre, whose absence shows in the track‘s noisy, decidedly un-bumpin’ mix.

The will.i.am-produced “Compton” is a very, very welcome surprise, as he uses the old Geto Boys “Gangsta Boogie” sample to create a track that runs over your face like all the others are supposed to. This track proves that the Black Eyed Peas frontman, who effortlessly spits the gangsta-homage hook, would might be considered a great rap artist if he weren’t responsible for Fergie.

On “Compton,” and to a lesser extent on the Public Enemy-jacking “Remedy,” Game transcends his obsessions with the Good Doctor and label politics and creates an organic, vivid Compton soundscape.

Alas, next comes Scott Storch.

He produces the same “Still D.R.E.”-derived track three or four times on the album. The result—exemplified on “Let’s Ride”—is a 50 Cent-influenced song-rap. The B-grade Dre beats just ooze of lameness, and so does Game, with his mind-numbingly repetitive wannabe lyrics.

Some of the more egregious fanboy examples are worth noting for their sheer insufferability. There’s the word-for-word copying of the post-track Snoop Dogg monologue from 2Pac’s “All About U,” changing only the names of the rappers who, according to the decade-old classic skit, keep seeing the same hoes in everybody’s music video.

There’s the sickening way Game intentionally lowers his voice to sound as much like Dr. Dre as possible. And then of course, there’s the whining. To varying degrees throughout the album Game sounds like he’s about to cry, and it’s goddamn pathetic.

It’s not that the Game doesn’t have a considerable amount of flow and some lyrical skill—he does, and it shows every once in a while. It’s just that he’s the poster boy for everything annoying about hip-hop: The name-dropping, the derivative beats and lyrics, the bitching, the lack of subtlety are all crappy trends… the list goes on. And the worst part is hearing them come from a whiny fool whose greatest wish is to have dropped 13 years ago.

—Reviewer J. Samuel Abbott can be reached at abbott@fas.harvard.edu.