Back in August 2008 Rapper Game released LAX, which included the singles “Games pain” featuring Keyshia cole, “My Life” featuring Lil Wayne, “Dope Boys” featuring Travis Barker, and “Camera Phone” featuring Ne-Yo. The album debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 and 33 in the Irish charts. Prior to its release Game appeared on 106 & Park where he stated that LAX would be the last album he records. A likely story! We look at some of his recent mixtapes and what we might expect from a potential new album.
Game is not shy of controversy, from his beef with 50 Cent and G-Unit to his legal issues through the years of him in the spot light.. So would LAX be his last album???
Of course not after the success of LAX, hiphopdx.com quote him saying “Interscope don’t want me to retire; they want me to come back in February with another album, which is so far off my radar it’s ridiculous. Now, if you give me like five, ten million dollars or something to do it…I’m the biggest thing in that building now, with the recent demise of G-Unit and that’s just it, man.”
Fast forward to May 2009 and the much and anticipated follow up album is given a name , In a interview with hiphopdx.com Game says
“What I was working on, the fans just started calling it R.E.D. for some reason, I don’t even know. I had previously said that I would re-dedicate myself to Hip Hop, and they just took that and was like R.E.D. – rededicated. I went along with it, man”
The album has had numerous setbacks with the release date, having been pushed back on several occasions . The R.E.D Album was due to hit stores in the U.S on June 15 2010 but was changed to the 29th of June. We then heard that the rappers fourth studio album would get the green light on July 6th 2010 but yet again it was pushed back to August 24th 2010. Game has since dropped numerous Mixtapes such as “The Red Room”, “Brake Lights” and what has the Internet buzzing the past week “Purp & Patron”.
The double CD mixtape Purp & Patron is without doubt the best mixtape Game has released in recent years. The stand out tracks include the Cool & Dre produced “The Kill”, which samples La Roux’s hit “In for the kill”, to “Ashed to Ashes” ”Taylor Made” and “Dead” . The features include Snoop Dogg, Lil Wayne, Wiz Khalifa, Fabolous and other big names. Behind the beats are The Neptunes, Bink!, Nottz, RZA and Dr. Dre to name just a few. Shortly after the relese of P&P the internet was going crazy for the mixtape. It was the most talked about thing on Twitter for a time, with #Purp & Patron trending worldwide. The success of the mixtape has even shocked Game, in a interview with Rolling Stone last week, he speaks about the downloads
”In the first two hours, we were at, like, 200,000. I have my guys checking, and now we’re close to 1.1 million downloads in three days with all the sites combined. Is there another word that supersedes “amazing”? It’s that.”
So “amazing” that Game released another Mixtape “The Hangover” last night.
Hopefully with the buzz from these two Mixtapes Irish fans will finally get to hear the long awaited R.E.D Album . If Game is giving music like this away for free, imagine what R.E.D will sound like. 2011 looks promising for the Compton Rapper .
WORDS // BLAIN MOORE
