On March 1, 2005, the Game woke up not realizing he needed to keep his friends close and his enemies closer. But before the day was over, he found himself neck-deep in what became one of hip-hop’s nastiest beefs.
In downtown Manhattan to do a radio interview, he discovered that 50 Cent–who raps alongside him on the Game’s biggest singles, “How We Do” and “Hate It or Love It”–had announced he was kicking the Game out of G-Unit for being “disrespectful” toward him.
That night, the Game’s entourage attempted to enter a radio station where 50 Cent was conducting a second interview when violence flared; one of Game’s Compton, Calif., homeboys was injured by a gunshot from an unidentified assailant.
“When I got home, it was war,” the Game said. “So I put the pen to the pad and created ‘300 Bars.’ That was the beginning of the end for G-Unit.”
He’s talking about the notorious 15-minute diss track that verbally flagellates 50 and G-Unit–the first song in the Game’s “diss”-cography that includes four underground mix-tapes filled with dozens of songs assaulting every aspect of the Queens, N.Y., MC and his acolytes. The Game also distributed a controversial DVD, “Stop Snitchin, Stop Lyin,” in which he and his posse travel to a house in Connecticut they say belongs to 50 Cent, lurking in the underbrush behind his back yard and stealing the rim from his basketball court.
The Game’s “whole personal theory was: ‘If they are going to try to destroy me, I’m going to destroy them,’ ” said DJ Skee, the L.A. mixtape king and a producer behind three of the Game’s underground CDs. “And he’d come up with it really fast. We recorded a whole CD in three days.”
50 Cent responded in kind with the attack track “Not Rich, Still Lyin’,” among others. And while neither camp can lay claim to an unmitigated victory, the perception remains that the Game came out ahead simply for being able to withstand the sustained attacks.
“Now I’m bigger than I was the first time,” the Game said. “Now, the only person who has breathing room in G-Unit is 50. I’ve annihilated his crew. That brand is gone.”
