By Nooreen Kara

Hammersmith Apollo, London - 18 July 2005

With chants of “50 Cent can suck my d*ck, G-Unit can…” etc, tributes to our fallen soldiers that are 2Pac, Biggie and “Eazy motherf*cking E” and a drinking contest with an OAP, The Game brought the West Coast right out of Cali and straight into the Hammersmith Apollo this past Monday night. 

Stomping onstage in a ‘G-Unot’ T-Shirt and declaring that London is the closest to LA in all of Europe (I heard he said something similar at Glasgow), it took just 96 bars and 6 choruses before Game hit the alcohol. He invited a white-haired, white-man’s granddad he nicknamed ‘Pops’ onto the stage to join him, and so performed the better part of his set “drunk as a motherf*cker”. Smoking a joint, spraying the crowd with champagne, passing his spliff into the audience and downing bottles of Hennessey eventually led to the Compton rapper almost passing out several times on stage, but it was all part of the fun.  

Crowd participation continued with a brash call-back routine of ‘Who’s house?!’ and obvious responses of ‘Game’s house!’ – and damn right, for 90 strong minutes, Game made sure he was head of the household. He energetically bounded across the stage while delivering with an overpowering passion most of his album tracks, including ‘Westside Story’, ‘Higher’ and ‘Runnin’. In a Pac moment, we were asked to throw our “2s in the air” as ‘California Love’ played and, not forgetting rap’s other RIPs, Game asked the audience to wave their lighted phones as he orchestrated an impromptu chant of ‘NWA, NWA’ and the DJ span Biggie’s ‘Hypnotize’. 

With a low-rider bike as his only onstage prop, singles ‘Dreams’, ‘Hate It Or Love It’ and ‘How We Do’ were also performed with a brilliant stage presence, but what’s a Game concert without the hard-hitting disses? All ‘300 bars’ were breathtakingly rapped, then came the inevitable d*ck taunts to the G-Unit clan and the f-yous: “F*ck Bush. F*ck Suge Knight… You wanna know why I said f*ck Suge Knight? Cos I’m the motherf*cking Game, n*gga.” 

And as Game became increasingly wasted, support act Flypside were on hand to keep the momentum going with their rocky guitar chords, serving almost as a live band for the last quarter of the show. 

Admittedly, the show wasn’t the most professional and organised of all, but that’s not a bad thing. What went down was a taste of Game’s uncut life: the boisterous excitement, the beef, the sentimental side of hip hop. Anger Management, shmanger management – who needs 50 Cent on an arena tour when you’ve got The Game rocking an intimate crowd? GGGGG-Unot!

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