Game
Jesus Piece
Release Date: Dec 11, 2012
Genre(s): Rap, Gangsta Rap, West Coast Rap
Record label: Interscope
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Album Review: Jesus Piece by Game
Very Good, Based on 8 Critics
Based on rating 5/5
The Game's fifth disc is a concept album about his recent religious conversion – a change-up that has the bonus effect of adding a new angle to the former 50 Cent protégé's lackluster career. Jesus Piece explores the burden of balancing righteousness and gangstaness, strip-club patronage and church attendance, with help from scads of big-name pals (Lil Wayne, Chris Brown, Tyga and Wiz Khalifa all show up on the redemptive "Celebration," and Kanye West produced the spirited title track). Game has always been kind of a blandly rugged rhymer, so he gets points for infusing his soul search with some conflicted humor: "You know I love Jesus/But you can't catch the Holy Ghost in a Prius." .
Based on rating 10/10
Aesop Rock :: The Impossible KidRhymesayers EntertainmentAuthor: Sy ShacklefordComplex, bizarre, and disjointed are words often associated with Aesop Rock. His lyrics and wordplay have been difficult to decipher, but meaning can still be derived from them. His 2001 track "Labor" became a rallying ….
Based on rating 7/10
With names like 2 Chainz, Rick Ross, and Chris Brown on the guest list, Game's 2012 effort Jesus Piece was feared to be a combination cash-in and kiss-off to his contract with the Interscope label, at least by those who always looked to the West Coast rapper to keep it real and entirely underground. Dress it all up in controversy -- with some editions of the album having cover art featuring Jesus wearing a gangster rag over his face -- and it's the Game's most shameful ploy to date, but his covering the face was because "nobody's ever seen Jesus," and with the truest of intentions, the loosely conceptual Jesus Piece begins to explore the divine and the devilish, and how they both feed the soul. The hypnotic and hooky highlight "Church" drives to the strip club with this duality on its mind, and as the rapper gets a high mileage table dance, the sexy talk he offers his stripper is "You ain't 'bout that life, you ain't 'bout that life/You don't bounce that ass like 'Oh Lord!' then climb back up the pole to meet Christ.
Based on rating 3.5/5
Before Game released The Documentary in early 2005, it was hard to imagine he’d have as well-received a career he’s had thus far. Label drama and beefs aside, the artist formerly known as The Game has built a formidable discography that few emcees can rival. For someone so inconsistent in his rhetoric, Game has been the model of consistency in music.
Based on rating 6.0/10
The Game has no dignity, but it certainly hasn't hindered his career, which was built entirely without it, and even predicated on its absence. Dignity's overrated, anyway; if you leveled the accusation at him, he'd probably work it into a rhyme about Blackstreet so he could remind you how much he likes "No Diggity". When you've sold 10 million albums abasing yourself at every available opportunity, there's no reason to change course, and on his fifth studio collection, the Game is still happily, busily, thoroughly ethering himself beyond all comprehension: "I don’t care if Kanye hit it/ I don’t care if Jay hit it/ I’ma eat it up and I’ma lay with it" he says on the first verse of "I Remember", a song that is a bald imitation of Future's "Same Damn Time", with Future himself on the hook.
Based on rating 5/10
Given the tidal wave of music that surrounded last year’s R.E.D. Album, it’s both surprising and entirely predictable that Game would already have another retail product for us. Surprising because the album appeared with relatively little fanfare, finished on the sort of efficient schedule that Game’s found elusive in the years since 50 Cent and Dr.
Based on rating 5/10
The fifth studio album from Compton-based beef-master the Game, Jesus Piece, is almost a good record. No fewer than 20 guest high profile guests, including Jamie Foxx, Kendrick Lamar and 2 Chainz, appear. Combine those impressive features with some fantastic production and you're almost able to ignore the fact that the Game isn't a very good rapper — almost, but not quite.
Opinion: Average
For the last couple of months, VH1 has been showing the reality show “Marrying the Game,” which chronicled the wedding preparations of the Game, the abrasive, derivative rapper, and his longtime girlfriend, Tiffney Cambridge. By the end of the season, though, the two were at loggerheads, and the wedding was off, at least partly because of the Game’s heavy focus on completing work on “Jesus Piece,” his fifth album. Which is a concise way of saying: this album better have been worth it.
'Jesus Piece'
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