The veteran rapper’s 29-track, 112-minute album is a bloated attempt to remind everyone he’s a great MC, flitting between styles without rendering any of them memorable.
Riffing off another artist’s work to make your own is a tried-and-true cure for writer’s block. But while such exercises often serve as a jumping-off point, on The Game’s new album Drillmatic Heart vs. Mind they’re the endgame—resulting in a nostalgia trip with little substance, the rap version of the Stranger Things aesthetic. Game has long approached his place in hip-hop with a mix of reverence and entitlement; the hook on the title track of his 2005 major label debut The Documentary is literally just his list of the greatest records of all time, his own included. He may truly believe that he’s among hip-hop’s elite MCs, but his career in the two decades since has been defined by his inability to accept the fact that few would agree.
The result is Drillmatic, an exhausting campaign for GOAT status that finds the Compton rapper doing his best to out-rap his guest features while using their own style, à la the Notorious B.I.G.’s “Notorious Thugs.” The problem for Game is that this is extremely difficult to do—Biggie was one of the most talented rappers to ever pick up a mic, and even he tried this only once on Life After Death. The Game is less talented, and his experiments with different styles often prove disastrous. He whiffs on attempts to ape Cam’ron’s forceful enunciation (“K.I.L.L.A.S.”), Pusha T’s restrained Southern mafioso flow (“No Man Falls”), and the rollercoaster rhythm of Fivio Foreign’s Brooklyn drill delivery. It’s a daring move that only the most skilled performers should even attempt; Game takes shot after shot on Drillmatic without ever really coming close to succeeding.
Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of these “tributes” is that Game has good taste; it’s just that the creative elements and wordplay he contributes are often so corny they scan as parody. “Money Cash Clothes,” his flip of a Jay-Z and DMX ’90s synth-heavy club hit, quickly descends into something spiritually aligned with Jersey Shore. On “Chrome Slugs & Harmony,” his awkward attempts to mimic Bone Thugs-n-Harmony’s Cleveland G-Funk are almost as bad as his play on their name. Even when his choices are aesthetically pleasing—the “Rump Shaker” horns (“La La Land”), the Janet Jackson interpolation (“Universal Love”), a snippet of the late Prodigy’s intro to Mobb Deep’s “Quiet Storm” (“What We Not Gon’ Do”)—they fail to grow into something new, feeling more like Easter eggs than inspiration.
The 10-minute Eminem diss “The Black Slim Shady” takes the mimicry to another level. Game goes beyond merely mocking the white rapper’s voice, delivery, and complexion, writing himself into the Marshall Mathers Cinematic Universe: He kidnaps the brother of Eminem’s infamous “Stan”; murders (and eats) Dr. Dre; and name-drops Em’s childhood bully D’Angelo Bailey, his ex-wife Kim, and that cluttered closet. He makes desperate attempts to sound as deranged as the white Slim Shady, making for some truly smooth-brained one-liners—“I stick my dick in your podcast,” “Wipe down my stripper pole with the hair grease from your bandana.” The Game’s reverence for Eminem is well-documented, so his claim that he’s only ever played one of his records in his car rings hollow. There’s a sad sweetness to his obsession, the kind of admiration that can only be felt by a die-hard fan.
Drillmatic still offers some poignant moments, however brief. On “Voodoo,” his remake of BOA QG and BOA Hunxho’s original, Game paints a scene of a desperate father struggling to care for his newborn as her mother battles breast cancer, imbuing an otherwise standard ode to the trap with pathos. And Kanye’s verse on “Eazy,” in which he laments the behavior of his spoiled children (“When you give them everything, they only want more/Bougie and unruly, y’all need to do some chores”) might even garner some sympathy, despite the latent narcissism and toxicity he directs toward his ex. Yet at nearly two hours of runtime across 29 songs—with almost as many features—Drillmatic is plagued by the tracklist bloat typical of the streaming era. Neither fun nor profound, the album is almost impressive in the sense of collecting so much talent to create something so mediocre.
Even at The Game’s commercial peak, he was often overshadowed by his mentor-turned-rival 50 Cent, and he’s been trying to distinguish himself ever since. It’s a little tragic: From the start of his career, the Game has been desperate to be included in the pantheon of his rap heroes, like the ones who performed at this year’s Super Bowl. Yet almost 20 years later he’s even further from that dream, his rivals having taken his place. It’s a common aspiration, to be acknowledged by those you admire. But Game has spent so much energy wanting to be the GOAT that he forgot to actually be great.
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