How The Game ruined his own career
Kendrick Lamar’s victory as a West Coast emcee in recent years has shown that California boasts a wealth of musical talent. With the help of Dr Dre and TDE boss Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith, Lamar has become one of the most prominent artists and has kept his relationship with both intact.
However, one lyricist couldn’t make this kind of journey — The Game. The irrelevance of The Game in recent years speaks volumes about how far he has fallen in the eyes of his peers and his mentor, Dr Dre. By judging The Game on his antics over the past few years, you could be forgiven for forgetting just how pivotal he was for West Coast rap in the post-Death Row era.
Still, back in 2005, The Game nearly single-handedly resurrected the coast. With a five-times platinum, critically acclaimed album, The Documentary, the emcee undoubtedly produced one of the best hip-hop projects of the 2000s.
Essentially if the mission was to bring LA rap nack to the forefront it was a flawless victory. But things went wrong, very wrong and today it seems The Game is a rapper Dr Dre would like to erase from his legacy. So how did a rapper who was capable of so much musically and culturally end up snubbed and shunned by the man who gave him a shot and launched his career.
After handing him a joint venture record deal in 2003 with Interscope and Aftermath Records, Dr. Dre equipped The Game with every tool he needed to succeed. With a co-sign from Dr Dre, a star-studded album and a brief but impactful alliance with G-unit The Game’s debut album, The Documentary, was destined to be a success.
At this point, Aftermath and its signees seemed ready to take over the industry together. But The Game’s relationship with 50 Cent suddenly took a turn. As such, after a very public beef, it significantly strained ‘The Dream’ rhymer’s relationship with Dre. With millions of dollars at stake, The Chronic creator had to make a business decision.
In an interview with Vlad TV, The Game described Dr Dre’s decision as a financial move, disclosing that “Financially and infrastructurally, [Dr Dre] had to take sides with who Jimmy took sides with, which was 50 Cent!” He added, “It made sense because that’s where the bulk of the money was being made, and so at that point, you didn’t want to piss 50 Cent off because he was the breadwinner.”
Still, by releasing The Doctor’s Advocate only one year after his debut, he game did the near impossible by proving to the world he could still deliver a stellar album without Dre’s guiding hand or 50 Cent giving him a whole host of hooks.
To the surprise of many, even in 2011, when The Game released The Red Album, Dre Dre still gave him vital feedback about his work, suggesting they had a good relationship. Explaining his correspondence with Dre to DJ Vlad, The Game once unveiled, “Just because Dre wasn’t on the production side of my third album doesn’t mean that I didn’t talk to Dre!”
However, as the years went on, The Game showed his unprofessionalism on social media and in interviews where he couldn’t resist talking about Dre and Jimmy Iovine. During an appearance on I Am Athlete, the Compton native even blasted Dre for including Eminem and 50 Cent in his 2022 Super Bowl Halftime Show, asserting it should have had strictly West Coast artists.
In an interview with Uproxx, the ‘Hate It Or Love It’ lyricist even tried to discredit Dr Dre’s impact on his career, stating, “Dre didn’t do aunty beats on The Documentary, but I didn’t say he didn’t oversee it, you would want Dre to oversee anything because he’s a mastermind at that. But as fast as lie doing a beat for The Documentary. No. I’ve never had a Dre beat in my career. He then maligned Eminem and Snoop Dogg, adding, “I have never had a song with Dre on it, and Dre is in my music video. Snoop has a ton. Em has a ton. I don’t have none!”