Da Game Is to Be Sold, Not to Be Told Review

The context explains it without excusing it. He needed out of a collapsing label, took the deal that was offered, and walked into an operation that made records in a fortnight and pressed them by the truckload. The production is the house style, thin keyboard stabs and drum machine presets, and it strips out everything that made his delivery work, because that voice needs air and these beats have none.

Twenty one tracks and he barely appears alone on any of them, ceding verse after verse to the roster. Still a G Thang tries to summon the old feeling and gets about half way. Gin and Juice II is a bad idea executed politely. He is not phoning it in exactly, he is simply on the wrong record, and you can hear him trying to find a pocket that the arrangements refuse to give him. It moved units and cost him a decade of reputation.