THE AFTERMATH



Game: I haven’t listened to The Documentary in five years man. [Laughs.] That’s like you sitting in the house looking at pictures of yourself all day. I go back and listen to Ready To Die, The Blueprint, and like, fucking Makaveli, Straight Outta Compton. I’m not a Game fan. I’m not nobody but me.

Angelo Sanders: You gotta understand what Game was going through. He was 22 years old: Foster homes, broken homes, abuse, the molestation of his sisters...all this craziness to, "I’m fucking with Dre and everybody loves me." Game dropped names in his raps and people say, "That’s his style, that’s all he can do." Man, he can do so many other things! He was just enamored that he could call these people his peers. He was fucking with Dre, so he got open arms early. Busta Rhymes is telling you how dope you are at 22 years old, like huh? A kid from Compton?

At that time he was the “Savior of the West.” Snoop hadn’t had a relevant record in a minute and niggas wanted something fresh and new. That’s a lot of pressure for a 22-year-old kid from Compton. He was able to do it, he pulled it off, and has been doing it ever since.

He’s a real artist. He had to find the difference between being a street nigga and being an artist on that album. That’s what’s so beautiful about The Documentary: He was able to transcend what he was talking about, what he could become, what he came from. He became bigger than just himself on that record.

Mike Lynn: The issue between 50 and Game was a real simple one: 50 is like, "I’m responsible for you being a star." And Game is like, "You’re not responsible for me being an artist." It didn’t matter who wrote the songs from a fan-based standpoint. Game is looking at 50 like, "You didn’t sign me. Mike signed me. So you’re not responsible for me being on Aftermath. I’m supporting G-Unit, but you’re not responsible for me. You had nothing to do with me getting a record deal. You helped me come out, you helped me with my hits, but you’re not responsible for me being an artist."

That’s where 50 felt like Game wasn’t giving him enough respect for helping him, and Game felt like 50 wasn’t respecting him for being an artist before he met 50. That’s really where the wheels fell off. The relationship was already falling apart before the video of "Hate It or Love It" because 50 was feeling like Game wasn’t falling in line. And at the time, Game was becoming a star.

Sha Money XL: The thing that was toxic for Game was that in G-Unit, at the time, we were all self-contained. The music, the management—we was like a 360 deal before those things became popular. Any time you have an artist, their ego starts to grow as their popularity starts to grow. They all go through that. I don't care what any rapper tells you, if they're under another rapper, they all go through that shit. I was able to manage those frustrations and keep them positive, keep them in a good space where there was no friction caused between the leaders of the crew and the boss man 50. But Game had his own crew and his own management team that had their own motives. Sometimes, when you divide people you can make more money.

I seen the hurricane growing because he was starting to cancel appointments, cancel touring that we would set up. One time he called me from London and was like, "Yo man, I can't take this shit." He was frustrated on some anger shit. I was like, "Yo, calm down man." He said, "I'm gonna come back Hurricane Game." He kinda warned me as if he was about to do some flip shit. So I told Fif, "This kid Game man, his head man is starting to get big early man." But Fif is desensitized to that shit because he sees it all the time with everybody, everybody’s head gets big at a point.

So 50 didn't really monitor it or speak to him to maintain certain things that you gotta do when you're the leader. He let him have enough time alone where they didn't communicate where that cancer grew so big that Game was ready to rebel. Soon as he came home from London from a promo tour, when his [first week] numbers came back and he was that dude, he came back to New York on some whole other shit. That's when the shit started, that's when that whole slogan Hurricane Game came. He came with the storm and that's when that whole divide and conquer shit happened.