The Game

Jayceon Terrell Taylor, performing under the pseudonym The Game was born in 1979 in Los Angeles. The family of the future performer proved to be not of the close-knit kind, and parents of The Game divided. For a while Jayceon lived at foster-parents’ place in the suburbs of Los Angeles, but when he was thirteen years old, his mother got the guardianship, so The Game moved with her to Compton. There the very environment predetermined the young man’s destiny. The neighborhood was controlled by the gang Crips, and his parents were members of it, as the musician once stated. However the future rapper became one of the Bloods, another gang. Pretty soon he was involved into the drug traffic, and because of one bad deal he was taken to the hospital – he got five gunshot wounds. The Game had been in coma for three days and after that he started to think of his lifestyle in general. After all he decided to try his strength and luck in the hip-hop industry.

So, the musician made his mind up to conquer the musical Olympia, and in 2002 he began making a name to himself by presenting his first mixtape titled You Know What It Is Vol. 1. Soon after that the artist was offered a contract with Aftermath label by Dr. Dre. Such a beginning of a career is at least impressive, however before The Game released his debut album at that label, he already worked with the independent label Get Low Recordz. Thus, in 2004 the rapper issued a record Untold Story, and in a year he introduced his major label debut work - The Documentary (2005). That long play became a real breakthrough for the musician: first places in charts, including Billboard 200, chart of hip-hop and R’n’B albums of Billboard and many others. The Documentary got the double platinum status in the USA, and that fact proved the highest music lovers’ interest to The Game’s creativity.

The rapper’s following studio attempt Doctor's Advocate saw the light in 2006 and it repeated the success of its predecessor by peaking at number one in Billboard 200. Let's Ride, Wouldn't Get Far and other compositions became hits, while the number of the artist’s fans increased. Well, the next album LAX (2008) managed to get only the second line in the chart, which is of course a great result. But The Game is used to make albums in the highest possible level, without compromises. Thereby in 2009 he began working really hard on the new long play. Many famous performers took part in the creation of that studio attempt, so it not a surprise that the result proved to be amazing indeed. Moreover, The R.E.D. Album. turned out to be one of the strongest records of the artist. That album was released in 2011 and it became a logical continuation of The Game’s career. He remained faithful to his style, to the great joy of the fans. It is a good thing to know that gangsta-rap is still strong, in spite of the R’n’B getting more popular. Definitely, The R.E.D. Album is among the freshest examples of how the real hip-hop should sound like.