Friday’s New York Times features the review of Doctor’s Advocate above the fold on the top of the entertainment section under the compelling headline, “Repentant Yet Defiant, a Rapper at His Best.”
The writer, the widely respected Harvard University graduate and influential critic Kelefa Sanneh, concluded that “barring some last-minute surprise, (The Game) has made the best hip-hop album of the year.”
Sanneh lauds The Game for his boldness in name-dropping his mentor, Dr. Dre -- who played a major role in the success of The Game’s debut album The Documentary but does not appear on Doctor’s Advocate -- in the title of the new album.
Sanneh doesn’t stop there.
He refers to the title track as “extraordinary,” and acknowledges The Game’s allegiance to his hip-hop roots -- a source of constant inspiration, as The Game says -- by spending the time to literally count the name-drops on Doctor’s Advocate.
“The Game is clearly obsessed with the rappers who came before him, and it’s an obsession that demands a tally,” Sanneh writes. “In the course of 16 songs, he makes reference to no less than 44 different hip-hop stars, including two named Ice (Cube and -T), three named Lil (Jon, Kim and Wayne) and two named Young (Jeezy and M.C.).
“And no one comes up more often than Dr. Dre, whose name finds its way into nearly every song. By album’s end he has been invoked about 30 times; the absent mentor is everywhere.”
Sanneh continues, writing that even though Dre doesn’t appear on the album, it still “sounds much more like a Los Angeles album than its predecessor.”
“‘Too Much’ has a typically smooth sung hook by Nate Dogg and a spot-on beat by Scott Storch, who knows how to make a track sound Dre-ish (You’ll need a fluid bass line, some spare keyboard notes, some cinematic strings, an impossibly hard backbeat),” Sanneh writes.
“Hi-Tek produced the slow-rolling ‘Ol’ English,’ a tribute to The Game’s favorite malt liquor and his favorite typeface, too. Even will.i.am, from the Black Eyed Peas, gets in on the act: he produced ‘Compton,’ which lovingly recreates the menacing sound of old-fashioned gangsta rap.”
Then Sanneh praises The Game’s rapping, calling his voice “terrific,” and continuing that thought by writing that “there’s something enthralling about the way he pushes through to the end of the line, often falling slightly behind the beat, and sometimes straining to cram in extra words.
“He knows the value of negative space, so he doesn’t fill the songs with chatter and noise; he clearly loves the sound of sharp consonants and hoarse vowels over a half-empty beat. Compared with slick Southern rappers or wordy New York rappers, the Game is a minimalist, a true believer in the power of simplicity.”
