The Game - Jesus Piece (2012)

The Game had squirted out an entire stack of great albums by this point, not one dud amongst them, but I always had the feeling they should have been better. The problem was in the whole, with only the verbiage exposing any obvious weakness, and not in the acrobatics or even the delivery. It was the obsession with making a classic album, which is fine because no-one sets out to make a stinker, but the endless references to Ready to Die, Illmatic, Reasonable Doubt and others in terms of legendary discs which might shuffle aside to make room for this one became a bit exhausting, and he only got away with it because he sounded aspirational rather than arrogant. The endless references to records by other people became off-putting, despite the initial novelty. I once sat down with the first album and started on a list of every fan-pleasing reference made to someone else's work. I seem to remember getting to fifty or sixty before the end of the first track, at which juncture the exercise struck me as a complete waste of time. If it was a lovely day, it was a lovely day like Bill Withers. If he'd bought a brand new combine harvester you just knew he'd spent the best part of a morning searching for something to rhyme with Wurzels, because that what it be like.

Jesus Piece is his fifth album, apparently a concept jobbie exploring religious themes and how they relate to this shitty world in which we find ourselves, which I'd argue runs through most of the Game's music, although here it's more direct because we don't have to wade through references to Nas, Biggie, Jay-Z and the rest; and this greater focus, denuded of all crowd pleasing waffle, reveals a  strong lyricist delivering heartbreaking home truths with an emotional investment comparable to Ghostface. I don't know if he's ever broken down in tears on stage, but he's one of the few who could probably get away with it.

Musically, it's likewise on point, with no evidence of whatever deficit may or may not have kept previous albums from quite getting there. Being 2012, there's a lot of that post-trap sound, whatever the fuck you call it - the thing that sounds like waveforms copied and pasted from track to track on a screen which will eventually emerge from someone's shitty phone - but it has an organic groove, like headachey rainbow breakfast cereal somehow cooked up without recourse to artificial ingredients; and the sound is like something vast and distant which inhabits a cathedral more than just the usual reverb wacked up too high. Even with the earthier monologues, it's sunny and soulful music for scorching weather and wide blue skies despite the pathos, the lines drenched in sorrow, regret, or the recognition of insurmountable odds. The majority of rap albums usually leave you feeling one of two or three things, while Jesus Piece delivers every available emotion all at once regardless of contradictions - and the title track in particular is a Mona Lisa moment in rap terms. It may have taken him time to build up momentum, but I'd say this one probably does rank alongside Ready to Die, Illmatic, and the rest.