My Gut Reaction: The Game - 1992 (October 14, 2016)

Jayceon “The Game” Taylor’s third of three projects in 2016 was the only one that could truly be classified as a proper album. Streets of Compton was a promotional tie-in for a documentary miniseries that I’m not convinced anybody ever actually watched, while Block Wars was sold as the soundtrack for a mobile game that was ultimately never released due to concerns regarding its violent gang-related content, and both of those projects were compilations of throwaway tracks that the guy likely would have placed onto various mixtapes had those still been his focus at the time.

Following those promotional tie-ins, 1992 (which is either his seventh or eighth full-length studio album, depending on whether or not you believe The Documentary 2.5 is a project that stands apart from The Documentary 2 as its own thing) has the bones of a concept album inspired by our host’s personal experiences as a teenager in Compton during such important cultural events as the O.J. Simpson trial, the L.A. Riots, and the release of his forever elder Dr. Dre’s solo debut The Chronic. Unlike the previous two efforts that I’ve written about this year, The Game appears to have been actually aiming for something specific with 1992, from the album artwork (provided by artist Joe Cool, who famously also did the cover of Snoop Doggy Dogg’s debut Doggystyle) to its brief running time – 1992 technically only comprises twelve tracks and has barely any guest features, which only happens in The Game’s catalog when he believes he Has Something To Say, although classifying this project as socially conscious hip hop would be a mistake.

(A brief aside here to acknowledge that 1992 is actually The Game’s fourth release of 2016 – a deluxe box set edition of The Documentary 2 and The Documentary 2.5, with some additional songs thrown in because all Game has is extra tracks lying around, it seems, dropped prior to Streets of Compton, but it isn’t really my thing to write-up deluxe reissues of projects, and also I really didn’t fucking like either of those two discs and wasn’t going out of my way to find a reason to listen to them again.)

1992 may feature far fewer guests than every single one of the man’s prior albums (it was originally not supposed to feature anybody, as a part of Game’s challenge to himself was to go it alone the entire time, a contest he clearly abandoned early in the recording process), but it still shares some DNA with our host’s other work. Several of the producers contributing time and musical backing to 1992 in exchange for financial compensation are repeat offenders on Game projects, especially Bongo, one of the man’s closest collaborators who also had a hand in helping shape the album itself. Game’s own rhymes, of course, are very similar to his past performances, in that he talks a lot of shit about killing people, fucking bitches, and selling records, all of which happens in between the nigh-constant name-drops which have become a running gag throughout the man’s career, but on a handful of songs he at least tries to adhere to his own self-imposed thematic guidelines, writing rhymes about his actual experiences with the gang lifestyle and generally growing up in the midst of racial and social unrest in Compton in the early 1990’s. To do this, he apparently consulted with the rapper Nas on a daily basis, running tracks and ideas by him in an effort to weed out the dreck, resulting in what is, in theory, The Game’s most focused album yet, if only because it’s so fucking short.

1. SAVAGE LIFESTYLE
Jayceon kicks off 1992 with a sobering look at the L.A. Riots, which took place when he would have been twelve or thirteen years old. Using The Chemists Create’s chop of Marvin Gaye’s “Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holla)” as a starting point, The Game launches into vivid descriptions of a life lived during what must have been a traumatizing event for him, with people turning to looting and selling drugs because they had no other options while the police were without any incentive to actually help them (and that’s me being polite about it). Game has a journalist’s demeanor here, running down the various ways society itself was collapsing at the time without bias, and, surprisingly, he does this with only the barest minimum of name drops, which I feel deserves a slow clap or something. Halfway through his second verse, the instrumental shifts to something with much more percussion, which causes our host to stumble with his bars for a bit as he adapts (he had sounded fine up to this point) but maintain his eye for absurd details (“N----s robbing liquor stores with taped-up Duck Hunt guns”). Game’s third verse abandons his roving eye in favor of a first-person account of “standing on the corner with a brick in my hand”, which wasn’t a great artistic choice, but overall “Savage Lifestyle” is better than it has any right to be. Our host’s verses are pretty solid, the two beats mesh well with both our host and the chosen subject matter. Huh.

2. TRUE COLORS / IT’S ON (FEAT. OSBE CHILL)
Less successful on a similar front is “True Colors / It’s On”, two separate songs sharing an audio track. “True Colors” hogs up more space, as the Bongo production has to fund room for three full Game verses along with samples lifted from both film and Ice-T. Using the “Colors” hook on “True Colors” isn’t exactly the most inspired gambit (I would have recommended he run with Cyndi Lauper myself, as that would have at least been interesting), and the instrumental is rather ineffective in underlining how tragic the prevalent gang lifestyle is, but our host’s bars, which detail the experiences of various family members in said gangs, are worth listening to even if the overall performance is underwhelming. The back third is devoted to “It’s On”, what is essentially a sneaky solo effort from Los Angeles-based rapper Osbe Chill (think of that Kendrick Lamar interlude on Drake’s Take Care), who wisely uses the opportunity to impress the listener over a much better beat, one that eschews the “Colors” hack in order to retrofit a couple of bars sampled from the Bloods & Crips song “Piru Love” into its chorus. Yes, his line, “I’m from The Jungles, all the homies call me ‘Barzan’,” is pretty dumb, but he sounds much better on here than Game did during his portion, which isn’t nothing. An unexpected treat, that.

3. BOMPTON
When I first heard this Bongo instrumental, which is a bit too close to The D.O.C.’s “It’s Funky Enough” for comfort, I thought that The Game must have been concerned that he’d never get another opportunity top dance with a Dr. Dre beat ever again, and had resorted to a form of beat-jacking that would have been more suitable for one of his billions of mixtapes. Producer JP Did This 1 (are you sure you want to broadcast that, bro?) didn’t even take the time to play the Foster Sylvers sample in reverse or anything, as El-P did for the Run The Jewels track “Out of Sight” in 2020 – this is essentially petty theft, emphasis on the petty. Which is a shame, because performance-wise, Jayceon is on fucking fire on “Bompton”, a sort-of day-in-the-life narrative (although his third verse feels more tacked on than anything), especially his second stanza, the one that begins with a derisive, “N---a, fuck the cops!” and somehow gets better from there. Not entirely sure why he had to reappropriate a D.O.C. vocal sample during the hook – he’s friends with the guy who is friends with the guy who recorded those vocals (although I assume, perhaps wrongly, that both Dr. Dre and The D.O.C. got paid for the use of their work here), and the use of “It’s Funky Enough” in the first place – which inspires the recitation of the title, also during the chorus – constitutes as a song-length name-drop (as does Game’s use of an Ice-T bar as his way of opening the song), which is a little frustrating. Our host sounded pretty good, but this song just shouldn’t exist in the wild – couldn’t our host have conjured up something a tiny bit more original?

4. FUCK ORANGE JUICE
Another brazen beat-jacking, this time Terrace Martin’s lifting of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Message” in a way that only Ice Cube and Puff Daddy might appreciate. This one-verse wonder (bookended with a nigh-useless hook) goes absolutely nowhere, lacking the humor and attention to detail Game’s best performances are celebrated for. It also seems a bit disrespectful to make a reference to The D.O.C.’s severed vocal chords on a song that immediately follows the track that practically wears the man’s face as a mask, no? Jayceon sounded engaged, I’ll give him that, but this “song” is lazy as fuck, the names of both a certain double-murdered and a certain worst president in American history dropped for no actual rhyme or reason. Nah, Game, fuck this song.

5. THE JUICE (FEAT. LORINE CHIA)
This was awful, and I’ll tell you the reason why: Lorine Chia. (Did you need a second reason? Because I have one ready for you. Okay, here goes: the beat, provided by both The Chemists Create and Drumz & Rosez, also sucks.) Chia, a vocalist the two people that read my write-up on Block Wars might recall, is all over “The Juice”, her Great Value Sia vocals, unpolished and wack as shit, absolutely tanking the song just because The Game offered her the opportunity to do so. Game’s bars aren’t all that great here either – “The Juice” exclusively features our host claiming that he’s in a position of power every time something good happens in his life, a list of which is provided as the song itself – but at least some of his stories are interesting, although he does dip his pen into the name-drop ink far too often. But Chia’s vocals pop up during the intro, the chorus, an extended nonsensical outro that doesn’t even mesh with the song’s premise, and multiple times within our host’s actual verses, as though she were a parasite our host just could not shake. This was fucking horrific. However, given that song title, kudos to The Game for not making this the second song in a row about a certain double-murderer.

6. YOUNG N----S (FEAT. SONYAE ELISE)
Sonyae Elise’s hook on “Young N----s” is wholly unnecessary, but I understand why our host felt the need to break up his narrative into four verses. It does help that said four verses are very good. “Young N----s” is the tale of Game and a peer of his, childhood friends who grew apart and found themselves on opposing sides of the ongoing conflict between the Crips and the Bloods, so this is essentially Romeo & Juliet except not at all. Jayceon’s storytelling is the star attraction here: his performance works in many little details that help your mind manifest the scenes, and it’s pretty damn compelling, especially its vague ending, which (SPOILER ALERT!) may or may not involve The Game murdering his former friend. The Chemists Create’s low-key piano loop is a perfect complement for our host’s somber recollections here.

7. THE SOUNDTRACK (FEAT. LORINE CHIA)
Not to be confused for a Meek Mill-featured song with the same name from the deluxe edition of Game’s last proper album, The Documentary 2/2.5, one that proves that a lot can change between people within the scope of a year (see: “92 Bars”, a track that we’ll be getting to in a bit), “The Soundtrack” (at this point I’m just assuming Game forgot that he already had one of these in his expansive back catalog) is solid lo-fi beats to study to nearly ruined by the Chia hook. Seriously, is she a relative of Jayceon’s, or did she win a contest nobody else entered or something? Why is Game constantly going back to her for his hooks? Sure, she had a unique voice, but that adjective isn’t always indicative of a positive trait. Anyway, the rest of “The Soundtrack” isn’t bad at all, our host describing what life was like in Compton in the wake of Dr. Dre’s solo debut The Chronic, and you bet your sweet ass Game uses this as an excuse to reference the good Doctor every fucking chance he gets here. WLPWR’s instrumental was fascinatingly low-key, allowing our host’s gangbanging lyrics the room they require to sound appropriately menacing.

8. I GREW UP ON WU-TANG
Jayceon fudges the timeline a bit with the Bongo-produced “I Grew Up On Wu-Tang” – the Wu-Tang Clan were barely even an abstract concept in Staten Island for most of 1992, their debut single, “Protect Ya Neck” dropping during the holiday season before being picked up by Loud Records, and the “Purple Tape”, the loving nickname given to Raekwon’s solo debut Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… wasn’t released until three years later, so the fact that Game references that particular project here is less for historical context and more because Game simply wanted to. Hell, all of “I Grew Up On Wu-Tang” exists as a East Coast variant of “The Soundtrack”, a platform for a clout-chasing Game to claim that he was listening to both G-Funk and Wu-Tang simultaneously in high school, as well as an excuse to narrow the parameters of his name-dropping to only the Clan itself, and even then only the most popular (read: mainstream) members receive mentions of any sort, so anybody hoping to hear our host shout-out Masta Killa will walk away disappointed. “C.R.E.A.M.” also receives much more airtime than expected, samples of which comprise the entirety of the song intro and parts of the hook, and honestly, it’s so lazy that it’s fucking sad. Bongo had produced decent beats, but this isn’t one of them - you’ll think he'd at least have tried to give Game something vaguely Wu-esque, but nah. Instantly forgettable in every way.

9. HOWEVER DO YOU WANT IT
Bongo’s final contribution of the evening samples the acapella version of Soul II Soul’s “Back To Life” (or, as it’s known elsewhere in the music industry, the actual album version of the track – I know, we all learned something new today) that many heads will recognize from the beginning of Hype Williams’s Belly, and he does a much better job here than on the previous song. (The Belly connection is so transparent that Game’s eventual brief reference to one of the flick’s characters counts as the least surprising thing he’s ever done ever.) “However Do You Want It” is enjoyable, its overall vibe much more chill for a song where an aggressive Jayceon overdoses on name-drops, insists he left Aftermath Records at the height of hie beef with 50 Cent’s G-Unit “’Cause I wanted to, n---a” (sure, buddy, sure you did), and claims to have been given the combination of “gin and juice inside of my baby bottle,” a reference to a song released when The Game would have been thirteen years old, so, huh? I still enjoyed the way Bongo manipulated the sample source throughout the beat, allowing lyrics to play unencumbered at times while completely fucking with the tempo elsewhere. Jayceon’s performance here was alright, but he isn’t what anybody’s going to remember from this one.

10. BABY YOU (FEAT. JASON DERULO)
Could be considered an out-of-left-field inclusion, as it has nothing to do with the loose theme of 1992, The Game’s alleged teenage years, but we all know that concept albums aren’t really the man’s strong suit. (Unless he’s trying to market an A&E docuseries or an unreleased mobile game, of course.) “Baby You” is a Cool & Dre-helmed glossy production where Jayceon is holding a boombox above his head, Lloyd Dobler-style, outside of the bedroom window of his ex-fiancée, although, admittedly, he isn’t really trying to win her back as much as he is attempting to profess his love for her while blaming her for his post-breakup promiscuity, which, how the fuck does that shit work? “Now you got me in King of Diamonds giving these hoes time?” Nah man, she didn’t cause that. Game also claims that the reality show they co-starred in only came about as a way to make her happy since she’s the one that wanted to be on television (Jayceon, already being somewhat famous at the time, didn’t care so much for the experience, it seems). Jason Derulo takes time away from a busy schedule of not falling down the stairs during the Met Gala to sing both the hook and a verse, and honestly none of this matters because this not-so-earnest effort to score points with the female audience falls fucking flat.

11. WHAT YOUR LIFE LIKE
Surprisingly, given our host’s tendency to stir the pot (see: the very next track), The Game’s “What Your Life Like” bears zero resemblance to the Beanie Sigel series of tracks where the Broad Street Bully describes days wasting away in prison. Instead, Jayceon steps onto this (shitty) Phonix beat and fucking struts, bragging to anyone who is within earshot of his record sales, his many celebrity connections (which, of course, translates into a metric ton of name-drops), and his love of fucking, because you know, (*gestures wildly at all of this*). Some of our host’s boasts are kind of interesting, from his claim to being powerful enough to have rejected beats from both Pharrell and Swizz, er, Beatz to his ultimate flex: “N---a, I’m the greatest / ‘300 Bars [& Runnin’]’ was like fifteen minutes long – tell me, how many times you played it?” It’s too bad the weak-ass instrumental isn’t engaging enough to carry Game’s words here, as his shit-talk is at early mixtape-levels of disrespect here. He also talks abut wanting to sue Interscope head Jimmy Iovine for royalties, which, well, seems like there’s a story there.

12. 92 BARS
Speaking of “300 Bars & Runnin’”, here’s a spiritual cousin to that loosely-knit mixtape-exclusive series of early dis tracks. “92 Bars”, which feels twice as long in execution and is named after the album title, so counting each individual line is a fool’s errand, is The Game’s declaration of war on rapper Meek Mill, although unlike our host’s past dismantling of other opponents usually named Curtis Jackson at birth, Meek is hardly mentioned at all during the song itself, a one-verse wonder featuring boasts-n-bullshit galore. The Game thrives in this type of structure, and as expected he manages several funny lines, but, like his other efforts in this hip hop subgenre, “92 Bars” feels a bit like homework to actually sit all the way through., The instrumental does it no favors: the beat is so bland that the prospect of hearing it on a loop for over five minutes is unappealing at best. And this is how the album ends?

Oh wait, no it isn’t. Physical copies of 1992 come with a bonus disc featuring the following song, labeled as a “single” for whatever reason. (Digital consumers don’t have to worry about switching out discs or anything, as the next track simply comes on right after “92 Bars”, erasing any supposed line of demarcation.)

13. ALL EYEZ (FEAT. JEREMIH)
Released long before 1992 was announced, The Game finds a way to fit the Jeremih-assisted rap-n-bullshit track “All Eyez” into the program even though it doesn’t make any fucking sense as a part of the project by any standard of measurement. Scott Storch’s instrumental is a far cry from his coke-addled best work – it’s garbage, as are Game’s lyrics, a song-length excuse for him to hit on model Karrueche Tran, whose name is even dropped toward the end as a bit of a middle finger-slash-tip of the hat to the unrepentant woman-beating garbage slime Christopher Br*wn. Crooner Jeremih has the thankless task of singing a hook for this nonsense, which is so fucking terrible that it doesn’t deserve any further criticism, as this is just a waste of all of our valuable time.

THE LAST WORD: There are too many moments where 1992 sounds like a mixtape offering, and I don’t mean that as a compliment to The Game’s looser style or willingness to goof around with samples – no, I’m specifically talking about how a lot of these beats come across as lazy-as-fuck retreads of more popular songs, or as incomplete thoughts scheduled to be fleshed out at some point well past their point of sale. Which is too bad, because 1992 features many of Jayceon’s finest performances behind a microphone ever. I mean, the guy’s never been accused of not being capable of actually rapping, but 1992 feels like the first time The Game has ever consciously challenged himself in his writing, and while the album’s alleged theme features inconsistently throughout, the man sounds hungry, having put all of his experiences, both life and within the music industry, to good use.

While 1992 may be leaps and bounds above the vastly overstuffed The Documentary 2 (and its similarly obese continuation-slash-sequel), it isn’t without its faults. Again, a lot of the musical backing here simply doesn’t work. In addition, The Game’s obsession with Dr. Dre is all over 1992 and has officially become an issue only an intervention could come close to nullifying, while the other names dropped throughout the project fail to establish that our host’s tastes in popular culture have evolved past 2009. I’m not certain how someone’s performance can both significantly improve and devolve at the exact same time, but that’s what I experienced while listening to 1992. And as much as I hate calling individual artists out (what am I even talking about here, no I don't), Lorine Chia’s vocals, littered throughout the project, are absolutely atrocious, tanking the project worse than the Detroit Lions are doing this season.

Still, at least it’s short?

-Max

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