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A small fleet of black range rovers crawls through the evening rush-hour traffic on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. Leading the pack is the six-foot-four Compton-dwelling, N.W.A-obsessed rapper known as the Game, wearing a baggy white T-shirt that bulges on the right side in the outline of a pistol grip. Sitting next to him, you understand what it's like to be a Number One artist. It feels exciting -- but also humbling, because the world hasn't changed. So it is necessary to keep reminding oneself of that prime Billboard chart position, because the passing cars and buildings don't.
"I got the Number One album in the country," the Game says for the third time that day, referring to The Documentary, his Dr. Dre-produced debut.
He is not bragging; he is reveling in the moment. "I'm platinum, man." He nods his head and smiles -- not at me, at himself. The diamonds bordering his watch blink in the sunlight.
At twenty-five, the Game may not number among hip-hop's youngest success stories, but he does rank among its quickest.
"I'm a millionaire," he says, "and I haven't even gotten a rap check yet."
And where is this new millionaire going? To the Four Seasons for brunch? To Harry Winston to buy bling? Perhaps to Rolls-Royce of Beverly Hills to buy a Bentley?
No, he is going to the car wash.
"This is the best place in L.A. to get your car washed," the Game says as he brakes on Spaulding Avenue, taking his place in a long tangle of filthy vehicles queued for a cleaning.
His arrival on the lot causes something of a commotion. Teenagers pull his CD cover out of their cars to get autographs. A friend shows off his new $70,000 Mercedes-Benz CLS to the Game. ("That ain't shit," the Game tells him. "I want a Brabus.") And a music manager ushers the Game into his SUV to hear new tracks by a rapper named Smitty. ("It's too busy," the Game tells him, and he's right.)
"I met with Joel Silver," the Game informs the manager as he exits the SUV. "He wants to sign me for, like, five movies. He wants to make me the next DMX" -- pause -- "but without the crack."
As much as any of his predecessors -- if not more so -- the Game is the real thing, living the myth of a gangbanger and drug dealer using his ill-won cash to finance a demo tape and become an overnight rap superstar. Within a year and a half of picking up the mike after a near-death experience that involved five bullets in his body during a robbery at the apartment where he dealt drugs, the Game was signed by Dr. Dre. His fame grew out of appearances on mix tapes, where his smooth tone, hard lyrics and mix of rap fandom and battle lust won him instant notice. In his most lauded mix-tape moment, "200 Bars and Running," he freestyled for almost ten minutes -- 200 bars -- to the tune of Dre's "Deep Cover."
Before his debut CD was even released, the Game had appeared on a half-dozen magazine covers, joined 50 Cent's G Unit crew and loomed larger than life on a Sean John billboard over Sunset Boulevard. He had even co-produced and co-starred in a movie, Millionaire Boys Club, with his longtime friend and financier NBA player Baron Davis of the New Orleans Hornets.
As we walk to a waiting area, the Game and members of his crew, most with the name of his business infrastructure, Black Wall Street, tattooed somewhere on their bodies, explain their plan to sit on the movie until the Game's success peaks.
The Game and his posse refer to Black Wall Street as a movement. Others describe it variously as an entertainment company, a community-development effort and a street gang trying to go big business. It is most likely all three. One of Black Wall Street's short-term goals is to start publishing books, specifically the autobiography of Big Fase 100, the Game's brother and a high-ranking gangsta who has become a local legend largely on account of still being alive at age twenty-nine. But the Black Wall Street executives also talk of buying land outside Los Angeles and creating an independent community, with each member living in his own mansion. The key Black Wall Street personnel currently live with the Game and Big Fase at a complex referred to as the Base: three homes and one large lot in Compton.
There are several dozen friends to keep fed and paid, and the Game has a grueling schedule, which this week involves rehearsing a live show, shooting two videos and flying to Europe for a tour with Snoop Dogg.
"It's more work than what I imagined -- too much for one person," the Game says as we sit down and wait at the car wash. He grimaces through crooked, yellowed teeth that, no doubt, will be laser-whitened before he becomes the next DMX without crack. "But I'm not going back to where I came from, so I'm going to do everything I can."
Where the Game came from is Compton, home of N.W.A, which he is putting back on the rap map. Born Jayceon Taylor, he received his nickname from his grandmother, because as a child he was game for anything. When Jayceon was seven, his father, George Taylor, was accused of molesting Jayceon's sisters, and foster workers took him and his siblings away. Social services split the kids up, placing each one with a family, except Jayceon, who landed in a foster home.
The Game's eyes glaze over as he remembers who was in the home with him: two Mexican brothers named Calvin and Chris; two African-American brothers, Andre and Willie; and a Caucasian named Nathan. Then there were Chris, Ronald and Herman. "Kids would tease me in school," the Game recalls, "saying I had Mexican brothers and a white brother."
The Game was soon out of control. "They tried to kick me out of elementary school because I brought Hennessy to school in fourth grade," he says. "I had kids drinking Capri Sun and Hennessy."
By the time a judge allowed the Game and his siblings to return home, the damage was done. The Game was fifteen, with a huge chip on his shoulder. "The first money I ever made was probably stolen from my grandmother or my mom," he recalls.
Though he excelled academically and athletically at school, earning a basketball scholarship to Washington State University, the Game began gangbanging with the Cedar Block Piru Bloods and selling crack. The drug-dealing got him kicked out of college, sending him back to Compton.
Along the way, his stepbrother Charles Bethea was shot dead, allegedly over a money dispute; one of his best friends, Billboard, was killed by gangbangers; and one of his older brothers, Jevon, who had a rap deal on the table at MCA, was shot because of a girl.
"I would rather him be alive and him rapping than me," the Game says, dropping his head into his large hands. "I would give everything away if I could bring him back."
The Game's wake-up call came in 2001, when three men -- either thieves or rival dealers trying to drive him out of the apartment complex where he sold drugs in Bellflower, near Compton -- shot him five times and left with his money and drugs. While recuperating in the hospital, the Game decided to find a safer way to make money -- whether it be real estate or rapping. After studying the Biggie Smalls, Tupac and Jay-Z CDs that Big Fase had bought for him, he chose the latter. That pivotal moment has already become part of hip-hop mythology.
"I know for a fact that he flat-lined," says Phat Rat, Black Wall Street's chief executive consultant. "I think the higher power put through his IV the whole situation we're in. Even motherfuckers who have been rapping ten or fifteen years aren't that good."
But the Game seems to have the ability to succeed at anything he sets his mind to, be it basketball, hip-hop, drug-dealing or even the video game Madden NFL 2005, where he can be found at the top of online rankings.
"I give a hundred percent to anything that I do, whether it be selling crack or fucking in the booth with Dr. Dre," the Game says.
And how does one excel at selling crack? "Just having the best supply, man. A lot of people don't know how to cook crack. Everybody's going to come to where the good shit is. The problems come when you're trying to make money fast and not making good product."
The comparison to his music is clear: The Game waited two years after he was signed before releasing The Documentary. The early friction between his just-do-it personality and Dre's meticulous perfectionism doesn't show on the album, which has five or six strong singles and not a single weak beat.
To enjoy his new career, the Game says he spent $100,000 clearing up warrants for "gun cases, drug violations and other shit."
Yet trouble continues to follow him. At the end of his promo tour, in January, members of his posse got into a scuffle with a Washington, D.C.-area radio personality, DJ Xzulu, though no charges were filed. And on the night of his CD-release party in Hollywood, shots rang out on his block, shattering his Range Rover's window. The Game says it was a gang fight that had nothing to do with him, but others in his crew say it was one of many recent incidents intended to drive Black Wall Street out of the area.
It is one reason why, even in this touristy block of Melrose, the Game stays strapped under his white T-shirt. "I'll be strapped for the rest of my life," he says. "I'd rather spend money on lawyers and fight a case than be dead in a coffin fighting nothing."
When asked about the times he has been on the trigger end of the gun, the Game says, "I don't have any regrets to this date about things that I have done, good or bad. Because I never did anything to anybody who didn't impose threat or harm on my life or my family. I've never started any wars."
But has he finished any? "I've finished quite a few of them, man."
I next meet the game two days later, on the set of his video shoot for "Dreams," a Kanye West-produced song perhaps best known for the lyric "I had dreams of fucking an R&B bitch like Mya."
The Game's not in the mood to talk today. He has something else on his mind. And that something else is five feet two, wearing a black silk robe and named Mya. She is playing a small part in his video, and the Game is making a small play for her. Her trailer is filled with red roses and, as Dre pulls up in a gold Aston Martin Vanquish, the Game is talking with Mya outside. He digs the toes of his sneakers into the pavement, as Mya listens, bemused, stroking her chin.
The next day, I ask the Game if the flowers were a gift from him. "Well... yeah, they were, man," he admits reluctantly. "I just sent flowers to show her, 'Hey, it's me.' She appreciated them. It was a good thing to do."
And how is the Game's game? "I'm somewhat of a ladies man, I like to think," he says. "When I didn't even have a car, I was taking girlfriends from guys who were driving Excursions and Benzes."
The product of one of the Game's amorous excursions is on the set: two-year-old Harlem, the boy he had with his first serious girlfriend, Aleska. True to family tradition, Harlem, his proud dad says, is about to do a deal with Sean John and, possibly, Huggies.
"I make time for my kid," the Game says. "I'm taking him to Europe. He's two. I can't go three weeks without seeing him."
I ask if the Game has talked to his father since being put in a foster home. "No," he says, settling into a couch in his trailer. "My dad reaches out, but I've got a big grudge against him." He slumps into the cushion. "My family encourages me to call him. But I got this thing hanging over my head."
He stands up and rubs the row of Gs, for G Unit, tattooed on his hand and slowly changes into black jeans and black sneakers for the video shoot. His arms, like his lyrics, pay tribute to fallen rappers, from Eazy-E to Tupac to Big Pun. Though his CD is distinctly the product of a man who is as much rap fan as rapper, hip-hop hasn't always been the Game's top priority.
"Basketball is my first love," he says. "I still got dreams of going to the NBA, man. I think I can make it. I'm going to try."
Kind of like Master P did?
"I'm definitely better than Master P."
What if you had to choose between having a Number One album and joining the NBA?
"Uh...." He freezes, one shoe on and the other off. "NBA. Yeah." He slips on the other sneaker. "Guys in the NBA make a lot more money than rap stars."