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The Game: Doctor's Advocate

No Dre. No Eminem. No 50. No G-Unit. No problem. Well, not exactly…Jayceon “The Game” Taylor seems to be the first to admit that he’s got some issues. It’s a strange situation: The title references Dr. Dre, Game’s mentor, who went AWOL and is nowhere to be found. The Game is so obsessed with the gangsta-rap-pioneering beat alchemist that he mentions him across this album. On “Lookin’ at You,” Game opens up the album admitting he has an entire album without a single Dre track but can’t help but boast that he’s a reflection of Dre and still claims his lineage: “I’m the heir to the throne after the D-R-E.” He references Dre and the legacy of NWA so often, and mostly with such respect, that it makes Doctor’s Advocate a perplexing but fascinating record. The long and short of it was that when his debut, The Document, dropped in early 2005, Game had Dre, 50 Cent and G-Unit all over the album and was even feted as the first West Coast soldier to join the G-Unit’s ranks. Almost as soon as the record came out, a beef developed between Game and his new crew, spilling over to violence outside radio stations. Hollow truces never really squashed it. It was fueled by Game’s indulging in G-Unit disses in the underground world of mixtapes—a culture within the hip-hop culture of one-off tracks trading in grimy beats and freestyle lyrics—which proves one way for a multi-platinum MC not only to maintain street cred but to sharpen verbal knives—the kind of knives that need to be sharp to cut through beefs. In the end, Dre picked his side and left the Game to figure out his sophomore record on his own. Ultimately Doctor’s Advocate passes the physical and stands up strong and lean as one of 2006’s finest rap records. And a great rap record is no small feat. Hip-hop music has been the biggest victim of a single-driven pop culture. It’s the norm to find records with three or four great tracks and a lot of filler in between, but that’s certainly not the case here. As the great Marcus Garvey once said, “With confidence, you have won before you have started.” Given the Game’s bravado it sounds like he’s won the Superbowl before even lacing his spikes. He proclaims himself a “West Coast messiah” and boasts his “first LP on the same shelf as the veterans.” The Game is arguably the most gifted MC to break through to mainstream since Nas (who himself appears on the closer “Why Do You Hate the Game?”), with the ability to deliver both machine-gun-fast flow and slow, studied wordplay with streetwise grace. And though there’s no Dr. in the house, Game enlisted a thoroughbred lineup of producers including Kanye West, Just Blaze, will.i.am and fellow Dre disciple Scott Storch. Each adds his own take and together cohesively give Game the broad, West Coast cinematics he needs.