There aren’t a lot of people I would carve out an hour for. Game is one. At first listen, Documentary 3 brings what I’d expect: Loyalty (he repeatedly supports Drake, but showing some maturity, does so blatantly attacking Kendrick Lamar). In particular, check out “No Brakes,” where he switches his flow between sounding like each of the feuding rappers. Machismo and posturing. Tough-guy raps. Conflict (lots of conflic in nearly every song, in fact). Tributes to his favorite rappers, either through name drops (and there are dozens of them) or by changing up his style to sound like them. It’s especially entertaining when adopts a rapper’s style, has them featured on the song, and then does them better than they do themselves. Game has always been a fantastic mimic. I think that strength actually leads people to undervalue his skills–writing him off as a copycat when what he really is doing is paying tribute (or dissing) another emcee by proving how much he actually listens to them, and revealing their own strengths and weaknesses. Eminem once said that the key to winning rap battles is to figure out how they’re going to attack you and then do it to yourself, first, but better than they ever could. Game’s approach is similar.
That’s all the good stuff. The bad? Game is a little too old and too successful to keep pulling the outsider/fight everyone cards. Also, as much as I love how he can flip flows and change styles, it would be nice to hear something that I knew for sure was Game’s own voice.
Overall: I thought it was good. Not his best, not his worst.
