Showing posts with label the game. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the game. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 22, 2016 (VIDEO)


Look, I don't need to say anything with this one beyond HOLY SHIT FALSE ALARM IS AWESOME and you all need to be listening it - okay, I'll stop.

On a different note, we've got Epica, Opeth, OneRepublic, and Daya on the way, so stay tuned!

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 22, 2016

So here's the other thing about the last weeks of a Billboard year - more than ever, it becomes a game of timing if you're looking to land a song on the year end list. Release the song early enough and it's no issue, but unless you've got a guaranteed smash hit heading for an inevitable #1, it might actually serve you better to release your songs a little later - keep in mind that most tracks will only ever stick around for twenty weeks on the charts, and the last thing you want is to release a track where midway through its lifespan the year shifts and you're only left with a portion of that time to rack up the accumulated sales, streaming, and airplay to get on the next year's list.

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 31, 2015 (VIDEO)


And this was surprisingly easy to get done - either I'm getting better at editing or filming these, or positivity just works for me.

Next up... ooh, I've got a good one coming. No, not that one, the other one....

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 31, 2015

You know, when I looked at the Billboard Hot 100 charts this morning, I was astounded: because this week scanning through the returning entries and new arrivals, I could find little to complain. Even the songs I didn't like as much weren't so much bad and in a worse week would easily miss the bottom spots, whereas for the best we got a plethora of solid to genuinely great songs. Now I'm not too optimistic to expect this'll last in the long term, but weeks like this always give me a little thrill of hope: maybe the air is shifting as we come into the last weeks of 2015, you never know!

Monday, October 19, 2015

video review: 'the documentary 2 / the documentary 2.5' by the game


God, this took so long to finish. Definitely happy with how it turned out, but still... so long.

Next up in hopefully less than an hour, Demi Lovato - stay tuned!

album review: 'the documentary 2 / the documentary 2.5' by the game

Let's talk a little about double albums. Now I've covered a fair few double albums this year, most notably 'Summertime '06' by Vince Staples and 'The Powers That B' by Death Grips. And in both of those cases, I was left feeling that positioning them as double albums might not have been the best decision as they both could be slashed down to tighter single records with less filler - or in the case of Death Grips, they could have just stuck with Jenny Death. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not averse to the double album as a concept - one of my favourite records of all time, Ayreon's The Human Equation, is a prime example - but even Arjen Lucassen struggled with his double album The Diary under The Gentle Storm namee. Yeah, I can appreciate making both a heavy and light version of each track and then encouraging your audience to mix and match, but that could have been a much tighter release.

So when I heard that west coast MC The Game wasn't just releasing a sequel to his critically acclaimed record The Documentary, but structuring it as a double album release called The Documentary 2 and The Documentary 2.5 - yes, I know each disc was released a week apart, but it's a double album, let's be real here - I was seriously worried. Even assuming the best case scenario that each of the hour-plus discs would come together, the odds of this project being just an exhausting endeavor to work through seemed likely. And even though Blood Moon: Year Of The Wolf wasn't apparently a full project from The Game, instead more of a compilation, it was hard to overlook that it was a fragmented mess that had too many guest stars and opted for way too much style over substance.

But then again, maybe I'm being unfair. Many people absolutely loved the song The Game effectively made his own on Dr. Dre's Compton, and considering he was directly positioning these records as sequels to the one that made him huge, I had some hope this could work. Of course, he also brought out all the stops as hip-hop's best networker since Master P, and on this double album we have Kendrick, DeJ Loaf, Ice Cube, Dre, will.i.am, Fergie, Puff Daddy, Ab-Soul, Q-Tip, Future, Kanye West, Drake, Snoop Dogg, Anderson .Paak, Jay Rock, ScHoolboy Q, Nas, Lil Wayne, Scarface, DJ Quik, E-40, Ty Dolla $ign, YG, King Mez, Jon Connor, and Busta Rhymes, and those are the names I immediately recognized... although considering his hype and his Blood affiliation, I'm shocked Young Thug doesn't show up. So I expected this to be an overlong, bloated mess: was I right?

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - august 22, 2015

...I'm starting to think the summer lull is a complete load of shit. Because right after another fairly reasonable week, we get one of the most crazy weeks I've seen in a while. Major shifts up and down, a considerable chunk of new songs, and new top ten debuts, and even a new number one! And while some of it I could reasonably predict - the One Direction debut was no surprise - I wasn't expecting the return of the Drake show or the arrival of a slew of Disney songs! I mean, seriously, what the hell is going on?

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

video review: 'blood moon: year of the wolf' by the game


Well, that was interesting. Not exactly good, but interesting at least.

Next up... you know, I think I'm about ready to talk about Aphex Twin or Iceage, so stay tuned!

album review: 'blood moon: year of the wolf' by the game

I haven't thought about The Game as a rapper in... damn, probably three years now, when I wrote a review of The R.E.D. Album back when I was doing these reviews on Facebook. It's been a long three years, so let's catch up, shall we?

So, The Game. West Coast MC, gangsta rapper with a solid flow and some occasionally offbeat lyrics that allowed him to stand out in the crowded mid-2000s. He struck it big with two legitimately great albums in 2005 and 2006, mostly thanks to extremely solid, hook-driven production and an embarrassment of collaborating artists. In fact, if we're to consider The Game's career as a whole, one of his most distinguishing factors is his networking abilities and his Master P-inspired tendency to overload his records with guest stars - which hasn't always been the best of choices, because he frequently mishandles them or allows them to blow him off the stage, which started early with Eminem on The Documentary and has continued to happen whenever Kendrick Lamar or Common are invited on the record.

But as the 2000s continued, The Game hit a serious rough patch. Between criminal charges, he released LAX in 2008 and the disastrously troubled The R.E.D. Album in 2011, the latter of which was a mess of epic proportions that only seemed to highlight The Game's inconsistencies in not only his own rhymes, but in his guest stars and his production. Thankfully, he managed to pull some consistency back together for Jesus Piece in 2012, but as an album trying to explore the dichotomy between being religious and still being a gangsta, it felt lightweight on actually reaching solid points. Because here's the thing: there's a reason I haven't really thought about The Game in three years, and that he's never really stood out to me as a rapper beyond a few great songs, some solid production, and his knack for calling everyone under the sun to guest on his records.

So until I got a request for it, I had no idea The Game was dropping a new album this year, and honestly, I had no idea what to expect from Blood Moon: Year Of The Wolf. I mean, there was no Kendrick Lamar verse to look forward to, but Freddie Gibbs was on the back half of the album, and surely that'd make up for the contributions from Chris Brown, Tyga, French Montana, 2 Chainz and Soulja Boy, right?