The story behind The Game’s “How We Do”
As far as West Coast anthems go, The Game’s “How We Do” is an especially sleek, stylish ride that kind of stands for everything Los Angeles has come to symbolise on the world stage. It’s The Game’s gritty sound at its most charmingly confident, sure: and even more enjoyable with the addition of 50 Cent’s hypnotic hook. Rapping over Dr Dre’s tight production, it was always going to be a classic of the noughties Californian hip hop scene.
The second single from The Game’s debut album The Documentary, “How We Do” peaked at number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and hung about on the charts for an impressive 28 weeks thereafter.
Not bad, then, for a rapper just starting out in a bustling and thriving hip-hop scene. In an interview with Complex magazine in 2024 – twenty years after the single’s release – The Game discussed with Mike Lynn and Angelo Sanders, A&R representatives for the track’s Aftermath record label, just how the iconic track came about.
“I was in the studio going through Dre beats, and I came across that beat, and I loved it as soon as I heard it,” The Game said. “I wasn’t supposed to be going through the beats, I was going through them unauthorized. [I went through] maybe like 30 beats. I had to do it real quick because Dre stepped out to go to this little meeting. So I lied to Vito (Dre’s engineer) and told him, ‘Dre wants me to listen to some shit,’ because I didn’t like what he had up for me. It was called ‘Fresh ‘83,’ that’s what the beat was named in Dre’s folder. I guess he thought it was some ‘83 breakdancing shit.”
“Of course, Dre was like he didn’t like it at all,” the rapper continued. “I was like, ‘Give me 30 minutes to write to it.’ So I started writing. Once Dre came back in from a meeting, he heard the first verse, and was like, ‘Oh, we’ve got to finish this.’ When I finished the whole song, I didn’t have a hook—I just rapped straight through. Without 50 on the hook, the song just went straight through.”
“And Dre was like. ‘Nah, we’ve got to break up some of this shit and write a hook.’ And so he called 50, and Fif came in and wrote the hook out. Then the shit was so crazy, 50 wanted on the song. So, my second verse, he kind of took out—it was too many words—but he made it fit him. [The song] was all my verses. All 50 did was change it a little bit to fit him. Not his style, he just changed the words and took out a couple words. He ain’t really change much.”
Discussing 50 Cent’s contribution, Lynn added “Obviously, [Game] didn’t write 50’s parts. 50 was involved from the beginning because it was one of those times when 50 came to town and was in the studio for about a week.”
“It was Game and 50 doing the beat at pretty much the same time. It wasn’t like 50 had the joint and then just gave it to Game, and then took his verse off. That joint was pretty much all done in the same room. So it was like, ‘Fuck it, let’s try and do this, do that,’ and 50 came up with the hook in that period of time. He had wrote the song, and then we had chopped it up, and added 50’s parts in there, and then he wrote the hook.”