A couple of months ago, Vibe published an article lamenting the decline of New York hip-hop. With Southern and Midwestern rappers rising to prominence over the past few years, the birthplace of hip-hop has only constituted about a third of rap radio playlists. But the article's unspoken question was: What's going on with the West? A pie chart showed that California rappers only constituted around 3% of those same playlists-- a far cry from the early 90s, when Dr. Dre, 2pac, and Snoop Dogg all but owned the rap landscape. Since then, 2pac's been gunned down, Snoop and Ice Cube have fallen off hard, and DJ Quik and the Bay Area scene have had little success breaking through to the mainstream. Dre's kept his name in circulation by producing Eminem and 50 Cent-- but even he hasn't released material under his own name since 1999, constantly delaying the release of his supposed masterpiece, Detox.
So The Game, Dre's newest protégé, has a lot riding on him. The Compton MC made a name for himself on the mixtape scene that made 50 Cent a star; it made perfect sense for him to become the first West Coast representative of G-Unit. And having spent the past few months embroiled in pointless beefs with also-rans like Joe Budden and Yukmouth-- and getting hammered from all sides-- Game needs more than ever to deliver a debut to back up his talk.
Now he has: The Documentary is the best West Coast street-rap album since DJ Quik's 2002 LP Under tha Influence. All of the G-Unit solo albums thus far have been aesthetically unified, a rarity in hip-hop; the tracks on The Documentary actually sound like they belong on the same album. Dre produces five of the album's 17 songs, applying his recent stripped-down cinematic style, and many of the record's other producers follow his lead. Superstar beatmakers like Timbaland and Kanye West hold back on their signature tics, fitting their usual approaches into the album's fabric. The end result is a rich, triumphant sonic tapestry; you can hear every dollar that went into it.
The Game is not a particularly singular rapper. His hoarse, guttural voice doesn't possess any of the relaxed menace of classic West Coast rappers; he sounds more like Tha Dogg Pound member Daz Dillinger than Eazy or Snoop or The D.O.C. He has an appealing confidence and an unforced lyrical toughness, though: "I spit for the niggas doing 25 on they fifth year, ready to throw a nigga off the fifth tier/ For the white boys in the Abercrombie & Fitch, yeeah/ And every nigga who helped me to get here," he rhymes on the dramatic and brutally hard Just Blaze banger "Church for Thugs". Unfortunately, he also frequently sounds awkward on hooks, seemingly hoping that simply repeating the same phrases a few times will suffice. In fact, many of the best tracks are the ones on which 50 steps in to deliver the hook, like the bananas single "How We Do", where 50 pushes the music-box Dre beat perfectly.
Throughout the album, Game seems obsessed with his place in rap history, constantly name-checking Dre and Eazy-E; on "Dreams", he spits, "The dream of Erik Wright, that's what I'm giving you/ Who walked through the White House without a business suit/ Compton hat, jheri curl dripping on Ronald Reagan's shoes." But the impeccable beats and The Game's authoritative gruffness carry him through the album; he never sounds like anything less than a star on the rise. Only at the album's end, however, does he reveal his greatest gift: a powerful, heartfelt vulnerability. On "Like Father, Like Son", the album's final track, he tells of the birth of his son. Over Needlez' melodramatic, string-laden track, he raps, "Nose, ears, eyes, chin just like your daddy/ I'll die before you grow up and be just like your daddy." Same rhyme or not, it lends a stark humanity to Game's sometimes empty braggadocio.
