When Game got himself kicked out of G-Unit in 2005, he effectively became a ward of the record industry. He existed, so somebody needed to take care of him. That responsibility fell on the shoulders of the Interscope/Geffen tandem, who, like bad foster parents, decided to remedy their problems with him by throwing unseemly amounts of money in his direction. In theory it might make sense, as Game's career has long been based on a simple formula: Surround him with artists more talented and famous than him, provide him with an envious selection of beats, then get out of the way and hope for the best. Up until about 2009, you could actually tack "profit" onto the end of that list, but the last few years haven't been too kind to rap's foremost tragic clown.
Game last released an album three years ago, and like The R.E.D. Album, it seemed destined to be a commercial failure. But along came "My Life", a Lil Wayne collaboration that became Game's biggest hit since 2005, and so the project, and his career, were salvaged. But that was a time when pretty much anything Wayne touched ended up making somebody some money, unless you were Brisco or Cassie. It was the Lil Wayne Feature Bubble of 2008, and unfortunately for Interscope, Game has turned out to be Pets.com.
The R.E.D. Album arrives in stores as a monument to the twisted logic and dire business practices of the modern rap industry. It has cycled through as many "lead singles" as the total number of radio hits that Biggie had in his whole career (yes, including posthumous releases). Its Wikipedia page could almost be printed and published as a 33 1/3 book. At a mere 21 tracks long, and featuring 17 different artists, the final product is one speedboat away from being a DJ Khaled album. Guests include Drake, Young Jeezy, Snoop Dogg, Rick Ross, Lil Wayne twice, Dr. Dre five times, and Nelly Furtado, who must've wandered into the wrong recording studio and froze up like George Costanza when she tried to find an excuse to leave. It's almost as if the rap and R&B world got together to do a benefit album, although considering the state of Game's career, that might not be too far off.
On one side of the coin is a work that's an utter monstrosity, and whose best moments appear very sporadically. The other side is an album that is almost-- almost-- too big to fail. Where some collaborations here feel like the result of Game spinning a prize wheel and taking his stuffed Lloyd, "Heavy Artillery" (featuring Ross and Beanie Sigel) and "Speakers on Blast" (with Big Boi and E-40) sound like they were conceived with consideration to how the artists might sound together and how the tracks would fit into Game's gritty aesthetic. In what might be the album's two greatest successes, "Martians vs. Goblins" finds Game putting on a worthy audition for Odd Future (complete with a hilarious Lil B crack) and "Drug Test" rides a beat that thrillingly turns the clock back to when G-Unit wasn't merely an investment firm.
The perverse thing about The R.E.D. Album is that amidst this unsightly storm of star power is the backbone of what could've been a coherent album. A number of tracks lean on soulful production that provides an appropriate (though maybe too on-the-nose) backdrop for Game's hyper-personal verses. Others dip into storytelling or flesh out a bit of Game's personal history. At the very worst the album wouldn't feel like one of those fake leaks that haphazardly packages together an artists' singles and random features into one large .rar file. But of course, Game's whole career is based on the hypothesis that he can't sell records on name or talent alone. So instead, the album smothers itself in R&B choruses sung by people like Chris Brown and Mario, and nobody wants to hear that, including, surely, Chris Brown and Mario.
The R.E.D. Album will likely fade into obscurity immediately upon arrival, but if it doesn't raise some eyebrows around major label offices, then this is a failure of not just one person, but also of an entire industry. As Watch the Throne lords over the genre, its antithesis is here: a strategically and artistically directionless album, built around a desperate, forgotten MC, foisted upon a public that has made it very clear that it wants nothing to do with him. Game told MTV's Shaheem Reid that the album's title referred to his re-dedication to hip-hop but, in a taunting, delicious bit of irony, it more appropriately reflects the project's balance sheet. We can pretend the album never existed, or better yet, joke about it for years to come. Jimmy Iovine, on the other hand, isn't so lucky.
