Untold Story, Volume II

Artist: The GameTitle: Untold Story, Volume IIRating: 2 StarsReviewed by: Jay Peregrine If The Game is rap’s self proclaimed MVP for 2005, Then JT The Bigga Figga could be a candidate for raps 2005 Executive of the Year. Every couple of months JT puts out some old Game material that apparently, he has the rights […]

Artist: The GameTitle: Untold Story, Volume IIRating: 2 StarsReviewed by: Jay Peregrine

If The Game is rap’s self proclaimed MVP for 2005, Then JT The Bigga Figga

could be a candidate for raps 2005 Executive of the Year. Every couple of

months JT puts out some old Game material that apparently, he has the rights

to, then those records go on to sell a lot of copies with minimal expense to

JT. You can’t really knock that, unless of course, it’s your material that

he’s selling. In just a few months JT has released two albums by one of

Hip-Hops biggest superstars. The second of JT’s series, Untold Story Volume II

(Fastlife), featuring The Game seems to have made no improvements upon where Volume I

left off.

Untold Story Vol. II is clearly more of a JT project than a Game project.

A lot of the vocals were recorded by The Game years ago when he was still in

the early stages of his career. But even then, The Game displayed the

realness that makes him one of Hip-Hop’s biggest stars on songs like “Just

Beginning”, where he airs out his father over some smooth guitar licks, for

some of the things his father did to his family while he was growing up.

Another song that true Game fans can appreciate is “Truth Rap” where he

speaks about life in the ghetto in a way that only a few can when he spits

Nobody knows there neighbors name/ unless they sell weed or cocaine/a lot of

black clouds on a block with no rain/The game got a lot to say/ so they

wanna take me down in my own front yard like Marvin Gaye.” But outside of a

few other decent tracks from The Game himself including “Business Never

Personal” – “Real Live on blocks, if we aint pushin the rocks, we movin the

stocks“, Volume II suffers from mediocre production and a lack of creative

direction mainly because the star of the show had NO input in the creative process.

It’s unclear how much of The Game’s material JT has left in his vault but

what is clear after listening to this album is that he’s probably getting

pretty low on his stash, which means that pretty soon JT is gonna have to

come up with a new hustle for 2006. Untold Story Vol. II has a similar

feel to a recent posthumous Tupac album where the lyrics seem a little

outdated and a little too familiar (heard some of these verses on the last

album) and the production and the M.C. just aren’t on the same page and

don’t compliment each other at all. Now, while Tupac can get away with

that, the same thing can not be said at this point for JT The Bigga Figga or

The Game.