Charlie Lake dissects the first single from The Game’s forthcoming album ‘Drillmatic’, featuring Kanye West.

The Game and Kanye West have joined forces for a plethora of collaborations over the years, with features on one another’s various albums and mixtapes. Now, they extend their history together with the duo releasing ‘Eazy’, produced by Hit-Boy and Mike Dean. The Game commented about the track before its release, saying, “Life should be eazy for everybody, we make the choice to complicate it for ourselves and others. Change your perspective and change the world.” The cover art consists of Ye’s refreshed take on Nick Knight’s ‘Skinned Monkey’, originally published in 1997, and does in fact feature an actual deceased monkey whose skin was removed, making for a horrifying image. Knight is a close colleague of West’s, having collaborated on several music videos and a bevy of other creative endeavors, including the recent video for his gospel song ‘24’. ‘Eazy’ is named after the late West Coast rapper Eazy-E, whose 1988 debut single “Eazy Duz It” is prevalently sampled throughout the record.

The Game’s verse begins the track, with carefully curated wordplay and namedropping throughout. He wishes that Dre prospers and lives a long and healthy life, because “…we need the beats”, perhaps referencing his multi-billion-dollar company ‘Beats’, or his musical production talent creating such beats. Several bars on, he raps: “Too many Problems, too many YGs”, namedropping fellow Compton rappers Problem and YG, whilst also being a double entendre for saying rappers face a lot of problems in this day and age and many young artists die before they are even given a chance to prove themselves in the rap industry. Another interesting double entendre comes with the next line: “So many ties to dollar signs, easy to end up on E” – here, The Game references rappers Ty Dolla $ign and Eazy-E to indicate how many rappers are losing their lives because of money and violence and how they end up on empty (on E) like a fuel tank, or in other words…dead. The verse is laced with conscious and self-aware bars, bringing attention to problems faced within the industry.

Then, regrettably, Kanye enters with a bitter and scathing 2-minute verse, hitting out at ex-wife Kim Kardashian-West. After a few bars spent embracing his ego as “Mr. Narcissist”, West raps: “We havin’ the best divorce ever / If we go to court, we’ll go to court together”. He also takes a hit at Kim’s parenting, claiming, “The cameras watch the kids / Y’all stop taking the credit”. Next came a direct whack at comedian Pete Davidson, who Kardashian has been publicly dating since last November: “God saved me from that crash / Just so I can beat Pete Davidson’s ass.” He is of course referencing here the motorcycle crash in 2002 in which he very narrowly survived, shattering his jaw in the process. Kanye’s new girlfriend Julia Fox can be heard saying, “Who?” after Pete’s name, adding to the already distasteful nature of his verse.

Production-wise, the song is excellent, with a lurching synth melody and some enjoyable scratches by DJ Premier in the latter 20 seconds of the record, much like those on Graduation’s ‘Everything I Am’. However, rather than Ye’s verse coming across as an ego-driven, confident kick-back at Kim, showing that he is unfazed by her new love interest, it sounds as though it is coming from a place of insecurity and hurt, not least because of how uncalled for his threat to Davidson appears to be. The song would be lyrically compelling and interesting, especially with such a strong start from The Game, if it weren’t for the inclusion of masses of bitter insults from Kanye. It almost seems completely unconcerned with proving anything, sounding almost like a botched freestyle of his. Ye’s spiel is lightly humorous at best if you’re as unfazed by his questionable moral compass as I am at this point.

It is frustrating that a song with so much potential could be tainted this badly by such pettiness. Nevertheless, it is a somewhat enjoyable song, with a catchy sample flip and aggressive beat in the background – the lyricism in the foreground however, not so much. Listen to the track here.