Pitchfork

The Game would like you to know that he was in jail, and he's getting out. Four walls apparently couldn't contain the West Coast rapper's Cool & Dre-produced "Big Dreams", and really, "free as a bird" makes a lot more sense in this context than in that lackluster Beatles reunion song (Lennon was dead! You call that free?). Expected to appear on Game's upcoming third album, L.A.X., this track finds Jayceon Terrell Taylor continuing to gruffly, none-too-subtly set himself up as the heir to his mentor Dr. Dre, even as he also sets his sights on East Coaster Jay-Z: "I done rocked enough fellas to be you, Jigga." Big dreams, indeed, but this is the guy behind Doctor's Advocate and The Documentary, so, y'know.

Soulful female vocal samples jostle with wobbly synths and some totally literal sound effects (a V12 roaring, dogs barking), leaving Game plenty of room for good-enough boasts about murder-- "I kill tracks like AIDS" barely even makes sense, but it's funnier than last week's entire "South Park" episode-- and drug dealing-- "Lunchtime I was selling behind the bungalows"-- plus some much more interesting shit about Ellen DeGeneres, blood diamonds, and Michael Vick. Oh, and Jah Rule, Fat Joe, 50 Cent, Lil Wayne? Game's got one word for you: "Compton!" Still, the "big money, big pimping, big dreams" chorus doesn't quite live up to its triumphant horn blares. Taylor's still the weird, raspy, endlessly name-dropping rapper you know from his previous work, but "Big Dreams" could use some of those album's expensively fashioned hooks to help keep its dreams firmly in mind after the track ends, instead of just slip-sliding away.

[from the "Big Dreams" single; out now on Geffen/Interscope]