Away with Words: In Pursuit of Authenticity

We're all suckers for a comeback

What do The Game, hip hop's latest sensation, and Martha Stewart, America's incarcerated domestic diva, have in common? Bankability. Based on a comeback. The Game's debut album, the "most anticipated album of the year," hit stores at number one on the charts. MTV attributes his success to "the unconditional street love he's been given by kids from New York to Compton." Why the love? He's a former drug dealer and gang lifer turned rap star who survived, among other things, an execution style attemp on his life. And he's transparent about his past and his present -- the good, the bad, and the ugly:

"I didn't want to stop what I was doing, because I was having fun. Some people don't know. We don't have no other choice, so we develop the love for it. When a child grows up in this type of environment, and the older role models aren't really role models ... it's normal to be a gangbanger here. Don't nobody have a problem out here with being a gangbanger. Don't nobody out here have a problem with killing or shooting to defend themselves or save their own lives." Game's ties to gangbanging existed from birth. Although he eventually followed his brother Big Fase Hunned into the Bloods, his mother was a Hoover Crip and his father and deceased older brother, Javon, were affiliated with the Nutty Block Crips.

"I seen my moms doing her thing," Game thinks back. "I seen my dad and my moms load guns together, take guns apart together. Smoke together, drink together and have good times. [I seen them] go out and do drive-bys. My mom is a hustler. My moms ain't ever have no working job and neither did my father."

Game's older brother Javon, while involved in gangs as well ... was shot at a gas station. He got into a dispute with a man over a girl. ... Shortly after Game left the hospital, he got the call telling him that his brother passed away. "My dad wasn't really there for us like he should have been," says Game, a few tears flowing down his face. "I think ultimately that led to my brother's murder. I really felt that if my dad was in our life a little bit more, then, you know, my brother would probably still be here. We'd probably be doing something even more positive than rap. 'Cause rap ain't always the most positive thing, and rap leads to deaths ... B.I.G., Tupac. I think about that every day when I look in my son's eyes. It's enough to make a grown man cry, you know. I think about the things that I say or the things that I have said and I think like, 'Damn.' "

Meanwhile, yesterday Donald Trump and Mark Burnett anounced on behalf of the queen of domesticity that Martha Stewart will star in a spinoff of Trump's own Apprentice show. Production is scheduled to begin immediately after her March release from prison, with a tentative airdate in fall 2005.

The British-born Burnett said he believes viewers will be ready to accept Stewart as a TV personality — even after she served a prison sentence for lying to federal prosecutors.

"What I learned after coming here [to the United States] was that this is a country that, when you have a problem, you pay your price and Americans allow you to move on," he said. "Americans love to see people make good after being pushed down.

posted by Jeremy Del Rio @ 2/03/2005 11:15:00 PM