The Album starts off with an intro from Dr Dre narrating Game’s early life, which he continued doing at intervals all through the album.Then the album proper starts off with the first song, The City, featuring Kendrick Lamar. Game was on his hard-core shit, over hard beats. Newcomer, Lamar took the hook, he spazzed out at the end of the song when the beat went off. I think this gave the album a great feel of what to come. The next track, Drug Test, has a feel of west coast classic to it, and features Dr Dre and Snoop. Not one of the best tracks off the album, but west coast rap enthusiast would surely love it.
Martians VS Goblins, track 4, I would say is one of the best tracks on the album. It features Tyler, the creator, and Lil Wayne, but Wayne just did the hook. Game has always been known to do a great imitation of the person’s style he features, and he does a great job on this one. I think he beat Tyler to his game. It is a good thing Wayne didn’t drop a verse, because I don’t think he would have done a better job than what Tyler and Game did. The album kinda flows from here, and the next track, Red Nation, which was the very first single (before the video got banned by MTV and B.E.T), just further ups the tempo of the album. Wayne also stuck to just doing the hook on this one as well.
Track 6 is a skit, with Dre continuing with his Narration of the album, which comes in as a sort of breather, for better things to come. Good Girls Go Bad jumps in after the skit, and the Kanye West produced Drake featured Ballad comes in as a softer feel for what has transpired on the album so far, and I think it is a good thing. The next track, Ricky is a concept song, that begins with an audio from one of the scenes from the classic movie, Boyz In The Hood. The excerpt went on for almost a full minute, before game came in with his verse, starting off with- Blood of a slave, heart of a giant, had to leave Aftermath because Dre thought I was too defiant. He went on narrating life in Compton, and also artistically weaving the story of how he got shot 5 times back in 2001. It is the creativity on tracks like this that separates Game from his peers.
The Good, The Bad, The Ugly; the next track up, has Game at his best story telling skill display. I think this is one of the elements missing in the rap game right now. Most of the new rappers just follow a set formula, and half-way through their album, you are damn near bored to death. I think I have to give game two thumbs up for this one. But if you have been listening to his past mixtapes like Purp & Patron, you would have noticed one or two tracks where Game displayed his story telling skills. And, I think the way the track blends into the Heavy Artillery track is just awesome. Heavy artillery features Rick Ross and Beanie Sigel. At first glance of the track-list on this album, you might be put off at the amount of features on it, but when you do take time to listen to it, you would see that everybody played their parts just right.
The next tracks that followed are for the ladies- Hello feat Llod; All the Way feat Wale and Mario, and the lead single, Pot of Gold feat Chris Brown. It is lovely that Game used someone as talented as Mario, regardless of whether he is hot right now or not, but Game didn’t pull it off well with trying to blend to the rhythm of the track. Dre continues his album narration after the Pot of Gold track, and it leads to All I Know- which sees a layback game just letting his fans into his world. Born In The trap is Game’s dream come true of wanting to work with Dj Premier; and even-though Game said at the end that he killed the beat, I think it was not so. I think it is something with hearing a west coast rapper on a Premier beat…East Coast rappers (the vets) blend better on a premier beats because of their big thing with lyricism.
Mama Knows and California Dream are the last songs on the album, and they are very personal tracks. I think I would not spill the beans on the California Dream track- it would have a better feel if you hear it fresh without any previous information on what the track is about. Dre closes the album with an abrupt outro that would make you want to start the album from beginning again. I would give this album a solid 4 out of 5.
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