December 12, 2006 @ 10:25 am

EXCLUSIVE: Game Time (Vol. 1)

Peter Relic

The Game: Let’s talk while we walk.… VIBE: SO…YOU PUT OUT THE “IT’S OKAY (ONE BLOOD)” REMIX. DID YOU REACH OUT TO GUYS YOURSELF TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN? Game: I wanted the “One Blood” remix to be what “Self Destruction” was back in the day, to be what “We All in the Same Gang” was, what the “Scenario” remix was—hip hop. I wanted every artist that I’ve befriended in the hip hop game to be on this song. We got everybody, man. We’ve got Jim Jones, Snoop Dogg, Nas, Fat Joe, Lil Wayne, Twista, Rick Ross, Fabolous, Jadakiss and Styles P, Tha Dogg Pound, WC, E-40, T.I., Young Dro, Pitbull, and Ja Rule, and there are other people on it. WHO DID YOU REACH OUT TO FIRST? Game: I reached out to 50 first. WHAT? Game: Yeah. I tried to see whether he was going to be a part of the remix, man. Chris Lighty, his manager, thought me and Jimmy Henchmen was joking. He ended up saying no, which I expected, but I wanted to sort of be funny and reach out and see if he’d do it. WHY WOULD YOU EXPECT HIM TO SAY NO? Game: Because me and 50—that’s my archnemesis, yo. We in the same room, we kill each other. But I’m such a funny guy, I thought I’d do it anyway—just to say I did it. THAT KIND OF FRICTION CAN BE A GREAT CREATIVE SPARK. Game: Yeah, man, it could. WHICH OF YOUR TATTOOS WAS MOST PAINFUL? Game: Probably the Eazy-E. BECAUSE IT’S THE MOST DETAILED? Game: Yeah. It took, like, four and a half hours, man. And after they started, I was bleeding. After I started bleeding, it was swelling up and they were still drawing on me, putting the pen into my skin. It was getting bigger and bigger, more swollen. Excruciating pain, but it was all worth it at the end of the day. Eazy was a great man, and his legacy lives on, not only through me, but also through other West Coast MCs like his son, Lil E. YOU AND LIL E ARE COOL NOW? Game: To me, we’ve never been not cool. I don’t pay any attention to what he was going through at the time. That’s Eazy’s son, so there’s immediate respect there. But he hasn’t crossed any lines with me or anything like that, so I wish him the best in his hip hop career. I even helped him in the early stages, put him in the Documentary DVD, put him in the video for “Certified Gangsters” when me and Jim Jones did that, and I kept Eazy alive—so even that was helping in its own right. WHERE DID YOU GET YOUR FIRST COPY OF EAZY-DUZ-IT WHEN YOU WERE A KID? Game: From my older brother Javon, who’s dead now. He had it. I stole it. ON CASSETTE? Game: Yeah, on cassette. WERE YOU MORE OF A VINYL OR A CASSETTE KIND OF KID? Game: Tape. Tape. I would tape songs off the radio. I’m a boom box guy, man. CDs came out and fucked up the game. It was dope, because when you played the tape too much the tape popped, and when you think about how tapes are made you think, How the fuck are these songs on this little brown shit? But technology has elevated so much since then. It’s amazing. But tapes were dope. I’m sad they had to play out. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TAPE COLLECTION? Game: I got all my tapes, man. JVC? MAXELL? WHAT WAS YOUR BRAND? Game: My brand was Maxwell, man. The guy sitting in the chair with his hair blown back by the wind? I was that guy—that was my homey. [Game’s son, Harlem, moves around on the couch, smiling] WHAT A CUTE KID. YOU GOT A GREAT-LOOKING SON. Game: Yeah, he really is. I ASSOCIATE HIM WITH THE PHOTO OF YOU HOLDING HIM IN THE ARTWORK FOR THE DOCUMENTARY. BUT HE’S SO MUCH BIGGER NOW. Game: He’s huge now. And that was only a year and a half ago. Dude is growing at a rapid pace. Come here…. I love you. DURING THIS YEAR’S U.S. OPEN, I READ AN ARTICLE ABOUT SERENA WILLIAMS SAYING SHE FELT SHE ONLY NOW HAD REALLY COME TO TERMS WITH THE DEATH OF HER SISTER. DID YOU EVER HAVE ANY PERSONAL CONTACT WITH VENUS OR SERENA AFTER YOU EULOGIZED THEIR SISTER WITH A DEDICATION ON YOUR RECORD, “DREAMS”? Game: I saw Serena…maybe a month ago in Scott Storch’s studio in Miami. She was with a mutual friend of ours, Kelly Rowland from Destiny’s Child. Me and Kelly were working on something for my third album with Scott Storch. I chopped it up with Serena, and she expressed her sentiments about what I did for her sister. That was the first time I ever met her. WHAT DID SHE SAY? Game: She said thanks for what I did on “Dreams,” that she heard it, and that it wasn’t taken in passing—she really took it to heart—and [that] her family appreciates it. WHO WAS YOUR FAVORITE L.A. DODGER WHEN YOU WERE GROWING UP? Game: Orel Hershiser. SURPRISE CHOICE! Game: Yeah, man. Fucking red-headed carrot-top pitcher who threw 100-mile-an-hour fastballs and helped win the championship. C’mon, man, errbody loved Orel Hershiser! And still to this day, I think of him every time I see a bag of Oreos. His name was so marqueed, it was crazy. You don’t get a name like that out of the dictionary. [Harlem has gone out in the hallway and returns in tears. Game picks him up, asking, “You okay? Say, ‘I’m a big boy!’” Harlem repeats it back to Game. “Don’t cry, okay? Come here. Let me wipe your face. Sometimes we fall, okay? But we be all right.”] CONSIDERING THAT YOUR FATHER WASN’T AROUND, WHERE DO YOUR PATERNAL INSTINCTS COME FROM? Game: Just being a good human being, man. From the lack of, you know? If you grow up without a refrigerator and there’s really no food to eat, once you get to the food you’re going to work on your eating habits. It’s just like that with anything. It’s just a lack of…especially not having a father present in your life. And for all the hard times, especially when I took to the streets, the camaraderie that was formed for me in the streets with my gang, being the Cedar Block Piru, which was a Blood gang on the west side of Compton, it formed a lot of friendships. Most of the guys are still around today, and they’re more like family, more like brothers. They watch my back, and I do the same for them. It’s a lot deeper than crack cocaine, bullets, drive-bys, and red and blue rags with us—it’s kids birthdays and family reunions. None of us are “blood,” but we still acknowledge each other as family and look out for one another’s kids and mothers and sisters and uncles and nephews, and what have you, man. That’s the part that’s misunderstood about Los Angeles and the gangbanging culture. IN THE ’90S, WHEN THE CRUISING LAWS CAME IN EFFECT AND YOU COULDN’T RIDE DOWN CENTRAL OR CRENSHAW AT NIGHT, HOW DID THAT AFFECT YOUR GANG GETTING TOGETHER TO HANG OUT? Game: Well, you know, niggas in Compton never really leave Compton. So anybody riding down Crenshaw, that’s really South Central and…L.A. natives. People in Compton stay in Compton. I got people in Compton who haven’t been across Wilshire Boulevard to this day or haven’t even been out of Compton in twenty-seven, twenty-eight years. I personally went down Crenshaw, and could give a fuck what the laws were. You still ride. Just because they put those laws out, they never stopped anything. It kept going on and on. Laws are made to be broken. YOU’VE BEEN OUTSIDE OF COMPTON. YOU’VE BEEN AROUND THE WORLD. NOW YOU LIVE UP IN GLENDALE. SEEING HOW THE OTHER SIDE LIVES—AND LIVING LIKE THAT NOW YOURSELF—HOW DOES THAT MAKE YOU LOOK BACK AT…GROWING UP IN COMPTON? Game: I mean, the way I look at it is, it’s there, but nobody wants to be there. Everybody wants a way out. There are a select few who make it out. As a person who’s superseded the lifestyle I lived prior to being a rap artist, man, I’m just reaching back. Other artists from there and the surrounding areas have to do more. Don’t just donate to charities, but go back and be active, show people there’s a way. Let these people see your face, touch your hand, give you a hug, and become one with the reality that there’s life outside of these situations. I can’t really do it all by myself, but you know, one helping hand breeds another, so I just keep on trying to do righteous and make it happen for myself, [and for] my people where I come from. Not only Compton, but around the world. Not only for the love of my son, but for the love of other people’s kids, children across the globe. As long as I shed light on the situation, it’s going to be a lot better than the opposite of that, which is me trying to glorify gangbanging. I’m doing my part, man, and I wish other people would join in and help the struggle. HENCE YOU REFERENCING ‘SELF DESTRUCTION’ AS FAR AS WHAT YOU’RE TRYING TO DO WITH THE ‘ONE BLOOD’ REMIX. Game: Exactly. I’m always trying to figure out…even though my career has always been…even though I’ve had a lot of beefs and a lot of differences with a couple of artists, not many but a select few, and everybody knows who those guys are, but I think that takes away from what it is I’m really trying to accomplish with myself and my career. I would really love for hip hop to be unified again, where there was nobody beefing with anybody. Let’s get back to the music, because that existed once for us. And I think that everybody’s so self-centered these days that nobody’s focusing on the big picture…which is making music. I stay rooted, and one day I’ll get back there to build a foundation on the same plateau. On Wednesday, the Game on Dr. Dre, Martin Luther King Jr., Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, Ice Cube, and working with producer Hi-Tek

January issue of VIBE—featuring The 60 Best Songs of 2006, as well as the Game, Nas, Ciara, Gerald Levert, and the NFL’s Reggie Bush—on sale now.

Article tags: The Game 

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