The Game has been revisiting the early days of his career, and his conversation with Shannon Sharpe reveals just how unpredictable those years were. He spoke openly about demos, luck, loyalty, and the strange path that led him to both Dr. Dre and Eminem.
The demo that reached Dr. Dre
Before he had a deal, The Game was studying everyone from Jay-Z and Nas to KRS-One. He recorded a demo featuring a Jay-Z verse on a freestyle and, as he admits, “nobody noticed”. Yet the music travelled through an unusual promotional style that Game adopted.
“I bought a CD burner. I went back selling weed, and with every person that bought a 20 sack, I would give them my CD”, he said. “Somehow they got to Dr. Dre’s sister”.
Soon, he found himself in the Valley, facing Dre.
“Dre was like, ‘You Game? Welcome to Aftermath’. And I was like, ‘What?’ All I really got is this demo… and this one Jay-Z verse that I spit at this freestyle”.
Inside Dre’s perfectionist world
Studio life under Dre was intense. “Dre will have you in the studio for two days saying ‘it’ the right way”, Game explained. “And then at the end, he would love the one that I said in the beginning”.
The work ethic came with inspiration, too, but we know that his loyalty did not last long. “Dr. Dre and DJ Quik are mad scientists”, Game said. “And I think Quik is a little bit more of a mad scientist than Dre”.
A Detroit session with Eminem
Although Game had met Eminem in Los Angeles, Detroit was different. The session left a mark. However, if you think that The Game was impressed by the creative atmosphere in the studio, the work ethic, or anything related to making music, think again.
“That was probably the craziest studio session I’ve ever been in”, The Game recalled. “Em eats Taco Bell like it’s gum… and he drinks Mountain Dew”.
He also described Eminem’s unusual writing process: “He sometimes writes his raps in circles… and then turns the paper the opposite way. It’s crazy, man”.
But admiration cut through the jokes. Eminem was, to him, a revelation.
“When I first heard ‘Hi, my name is’, I saw that on MTV, and I was like, damn, this shit is weird, but I like it. I never heard anything like that and didn’t know you could talk about your mom and shit on TV. I thought it was crazy. So, by the time I met him, I was probably pretty much already a fan of him in the early stages of his career. To be on a label with a guy that outrapped Jay-Z on ‘Renegade’, was crazy for me”.
So, how did this attitude transition into beefing with Eminem? “I was 24… pissed off at Dr. Dre, and he can’t outrap me. So I was like, let me just try to throw some shots at Em. That’s what it was. Another one of Game’s bullheaded decisions that pissed a lot of people off”.
A call from the King of Pop
In fact, one of the people who was not happy about his decision to beef with Shady, Aftermath, and 50 Cent personally was Michael Jackson. According to Game, the King of Pop called him to squash the beef, but the younger rapper simply hung up on him.
Imagine this surreal moment: hanging up on Michael Jackson, who tried to mediate his conflict with 50 Cent.
“He said, ‘You guys are so magical together… we should fix the beef on my album’. And that’s when he lost me”.
No regrets?
While The Game says he has no regrets about his past, aside from not managing his money properly, he is changing his ways.
This era finds The Game avoiding his old habit of baiting Eminem for attention. After the “Black Shady” debacle, he’s doing press, telling stories like a seasoned veteran and courting controversy by linking his music to the radical right-wing commentator. Maybe it will work. Perhaps it won’t. But it won’t be as embarrassing as last time, when he declared himself the Black Shady just for his record to flop, again.
