The California Mindstate

The Game “The Juice”

The Game’s new record is presented as a musical autobiography, and the music itself quotes iconic rap songs – “Colors,” “The Message,” and “C.R.E.A.M.,” pretty obvious stuff, to the point where I have to question how much of enjoying those particular songs is just clicking into something familiar. But “The Juice” is less about referencing and more about evoking the spirit of a particular era – the early to mid ’90s, when rap was still heavily sample-based but not so dense with them that they became economically infeasible. There’s something very interesting to me about listening to this guy reminisce about the past and the music that shaped him, and then insert himself into that music now as a veteran rapper. He sounds completely at home, but also a little like a time traveler into the recent past.

Buy it from Amazon.