LAX?

The Game finally released his "I'm going into retirement after this album", LAX.

I feel like he and 50 Cent are manifesting their beef, by seeing who can put out a worse album. I like "The Documentary" - any album that gets heavy production support from Dr. Dre is going to be bangin'. And "The Doctor's Advocate" actually improved on his debut. Despite not having Dr. Dre at the soundboard, Scott Storch and others helped make a classic west coast gangsta rap album. It actually sounded like his flossing was deserved. He was free from having to hawk G-Unit garbage, and his estranged status from Dr. Dre as a result of his beef with 50 Cent almost made it a concept album - he was a Ronin rapper, torturing himself over losing the hand of his mentor. Honestly, after Ghostface, Doctor's Advocate single handedly makes The Game the second most listened to rapper in my iPod (sorry Snoop, Meth and T.I.).

So WTF happened to LAX? Scott Storch makes a single, unimpressive appearance. The production is disjointed, and worse - just bad. So are the guests. I love Raekwon - but he's got no business trading lines with the Game. Ice Cube? Talk about irrelevant. I'm probably more authentic than Cube these days. And then we're not even going into the R&B heavy garbage.

Technically, The Game improves his flow with every album. He even double times his flow on the opening track. But he spends so much time canceling out righteous desperation with nihilistic flossing that he makes DMX and Snoop Dogg look like should be honored by the NAACP. Gone is the lost son of Dr. Dre (my thoughts and sympathies go out to Dr. Dre, whose 20 year old son was found dead the other day) - and we just have a guy who is los tin his personas.

Rappers retire the way Michael Jordan and Brett Favre do. But when the Game comes back, Dre or no Dre, I hope he gets his head back on.

I'll say one thing - LAX is so bad, I actually just put on Fiddy's last album, Curtis - and its actually not bad in comparison. At least 50 is focused - even what he's focused on is making ends while shitting on the hand that pays.

Don't be part of the problem, be part of the solution:
If you want a better west coast album - Keak Da Sneak's "Deified". The king of hyphy is back, his warbling graveling caterwauling fights with production that's been called "too bombastic". I think it kicks major domo ass. Best West coast album of the year so far.

Hip Hop Track of The Week

Tha Carter III is 'Lil Wayne's insane new album. On top of being one of the best rappers out there, he might be the only rapper to have a 'Lil in his name and actually not suck. The album is simultaneously self-assured and paranoid. He delves in some really bizarre role play, which actually reminds me of Faith No More's The Real Thing Album.

Strangeness hits its zenith in "Phone Home", with a chorus that somberly chants: "we are not the same... I am a martian". If you google 'Lil Wayne, and see that he has more tattoos on his face than the average federally incarcerated inmate has on his entire body, you might be inclined to agree. Sonically, the music creates a synesthesia that lands you somewhere between the lights of a hovering spacecraft, and a time elapsed film of rotting fruit - and I mean that in a good way.

Here are some of the weirder lyrics:

...i can get your brains for a bargain
like i bought it, from target; hiphop is my supermarket...

...We are not the same i am an alien
like gonzalez young college student who done just flipped the game like houston
Im used to promethazine in 2 cups...

...They don't make em like me no more; matter fact they never made em like me before
im rare, like mr clean with hair - no brake lights on my car rare.
I never had lice and I never had fear; I rap like I done died and gone to heaven I swear -
And year I'm a bear like black and white hair, so Im polar...


It's almost nonsense, but not quite. He's kind of like if Ghostface and George Clinton had a love-child, and that child was delivered through a vocoder, raised by Old Dirty Bastard and Prince, and they got him hooked on Sizzurp - you'd get Lil' Wayne.