Pitchfork

It's been three years since a song about lollipops kept The Game's highest-charting single to date, The Documentary's "Hate It or Love It", out of the No. 1 spot. Another rapper with a chart-topping "Lollipop" track guests on Game's latest, expected to appear on the West Coast MC's oft-delayed L.A.X., only now he's not here to "run rings around rap's MVP," as Pitchfork's Mark Pytlik once put it, and inevitably, this isn't another Documentary-level artistic triumph. Lil Wayne's Auto-Tune job here basically positions him as another T-Pain or Akon, a hook-singer-for-hire, and it follows other recent singing guest spots (Drake's "Brand New (Remix)", Gorilla Zoe's "Lost") amid Weezy's usual glut of new verses. Elsewhere, Kanye West croons the hook on Fonzworth Bentley's "Everybody" and does the Auto-Tune thing on Young Jeezy's "Put On". As Nas complains on his album-trumping mixtape with DJ Green Lantern, "Used to rap, now they all wanna sing."

Back to "My Life". Barking dogs, cinematic string swells, and angry gunshots lead into slow, melodramatic keyboards, giving Wayne a chance to combine his usual megalomania with a weird sort of social consciousness: "Hey Lord, you done take so many of my people/ I'm just wondering why you haven't taken my life." Wayne's people, alas, appear first and foremost to be other rappers-- not exactly a beleaguered group, unless you count years of declining CD sales. Game, name-dropping as always, invokes Kurt Cobain, condones Kanye's Jesus stance, calls Biggy's death a "crucifixion," praises Beanie Sigel, and makes a puzzling John Lennon reference, all in the first verse. Horns join, then Game quotes Wayne and gets a good dig in against Eminem (since clarified and recanted) before big-upping Yeezy again (and Common, and Compton, and 2Pac). To make it in L.A., after all, you gotta know how to network. (via Nah Right)

MP3:> The Game [ft. Lil Wayne]: "My Life"
[apparently from L.A.X.; due 08/26/08 on Interscope]