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<\/p>\nListening to The Game\u2019s ninth studio album, Born 2 Rap, you\u2019re hard-pressed to make any sort of claim to the contrary. The project arrived on the MC\u2019s 40th birthday, and the skill and self-assuredness with which he attacks 22 tracks\u2019 worth of soulful, sample-heavy production could only have come from a person whose passion for the art has been unwavering over the course of his 15-year-plus career. Until very recently, maybe.<\/p>\n
Leading up to the album\u2019s release, the MC has claimed that Born 2 Rap will be his final project. We have to hope it\u2019s not. Over the course of the album, The Game sets himself apart from the majority of working MCs today\u2014largely through vulnerability. Listen to the way he talks about losing his father in 2018 (\u201cGucci Flip Flops\u201d), or how much he misses Los Angeles\u2019 fallen king Nipsey Hussle (\u201cWe Love You Nip\u201d), or the pain he knows from familial betrayal (\u201cBlood Thicker Than Water\u201d). Who else speaks to Los Angeles gang-banging culture the way he does (\u201cDead Homies,\u201d \u201cTen Times Over\u201d ), or can make R&B-chorused rap songs featuring Marsha Ambrosius, Trey Songz, Chris Brown, and even Ed Sheeran all make sense as part of a singular gangsta rap story? Who else will fill these shoes if Born 2 Rap is his last word? Another lifelong devotee, perhaps. Hopefully the music here helps to inspire the next great Los Angeles MC\u2014as The Game himself envisions in the album\u2019s cover art, which features several pregnant women hanging with him in the studio, their babies soaking up top-tier MCing while still in the womb.<\/p>\n
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