The Making Of Game’s “The Documentary”

By 2005, it had literally been over a decade since a new West Coast rapper had made a huge national impact. If Jaceyon “The Game” Taylor was going to break the dry spell, he’d need help. Luckily for the Compton Blood with a Yonkers flow and a G-Unit affiliation, he had Dr. Dre beats, 50 Cent hooks, and an Eminem feature for his debut album, The Documentary. In addition, with production from a diverse array of A-list beatmakers like Buckwild, Havoc, Just Blaze, Timbaland, Hi-Tek, and Cool & Dre, the album’s geographical ambiguity only increased its appeal. Game also continued G-Unit’s tradition of making gangsta-ass albums that had big pop smashes with “How We Do” and “Hate It or Love It.”

When the highly-anticipated project dropped on January 18, 2005 and the first week numbers of almost 600,000 CDs moved came back, the drought was over. Unfortunately, so was Game’s time as a member of G-Unit as him and 50 fell out shortly after. As their beef escalated and became uglier, questions started emerging about how much Dre actually produced, how much help 50 provided, and just how much Game did. The fact remains, The Game’s The Documentary is a classic album. Six years after its release, Complex decided to speak with the album’s key contributors to try and answer everything else.

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