Album Reviews

Album Reviews: LAX by The Game

One way, albeit an unusual one, to look at the new album from L.A. rapper The Game (which may or may not be his last, depending on what you believe) is as a counterpart to Brian Wilson's That Lucky Old Sun. Both are nostalgia-steeped views of California and its diversity and sunshine. But where Wilson serves up an appreciation of surfer girls, The Game paints his record in the colors of G-funk, with allusions to 2Pac's "California Love" and plenty of early-to-mid-1990s keyboards.

L.A.X. isn't a straight wistfulness of yesteryear trip, though. The Game's mixed feelings about hip hop and all that comes with it are at the forefront throughout—although the tracks moaning about the bad side of the gangsta lifestyle make you want to tell him to get off the shrink's couch. He's lost a step in his verbal quickness, but a track like "Game's Pain"—which drops more names than Page Six—recounts the rapper's history in hip hop (an extended goodbye?) and shows that he's still capable of spitting a long stream of perfectly rhythmically calculated words with hardly a space for breath.

When Ludacris shows up for a guest verse on "Ya Heard," he illuminates what the album is missing most: joy in one's own abilities. It's not that The Game doesn't have those talents; it's that he seems to take little pleasure in using them, which is what makes L.A.X. such an uneven album in the end.

—Hillary Brown
09.04.08