The lore of the Game

The GAME, Dr. Dre’s latest discovery, arrives on the hip-hop scene this fall with a resume as scary as anything from “thug life” rappers Tupac Shakur and 50 Cent, who were shot more than a dozen times between them.

That’s why you’ll probably be hearing almost as much about the Game’s life story as his music, which chronicles his experiences growing up in foster homes, gangbanging and ending up with five bullet holes after a drug deal went wrong. (“Actually, seven bullet holes, but I don’t count the ins and outs,” he says.)

The Game, whose real name is Jayceon Taylor, looks as menacing as his history as he sits in a San Fernando Valley recording studio, where he has been putting the final touches on the debut album that is due in stores in December.

Tall and muscular, he isn’t someone you’d want to shush if he were making noise behind you in a dark movie theater. He’s wearing a flashy gangsta rap medallion and his arms are covered with enough tattoos to remind you of the Illustrated Man. His expression tends to be hard and unrevealing.

But when asked how it feels to be two months away from likely stardom, he sighs. The tough-guy bravado fades.

“I’m just so happy to be doing something positive with my life,” the Game, 24, says. “I’ve got a baby boy and I’m trying to make a good future for him. I know the music business can be rough, but I’ve gone through stuff 10 times worse than anything I will encounter. None of that can compare to my life story.”

That story -- climaxing with the night, three years ago, that he was shot -- is so tailor-made for today’s hard-core rap crowd that it’s easy to wonder if it isn’t too good to be true. One rapper’s website accuses the Game of fabricating a “street thug” image.

The way the Game tells it, he changed his lifestyle after the shooting. Drawing inspiration from Compton gangsta rap pioneers N.W.A, he started rapping about his experiences. His demo tape got to N.W.A co-founder Dr. Dre, who responded to the raw energy of the Game’s voice and stories.

Dre, rap’s most honored producer, signed the Game in 2002 and has been carefully grooming him, producing four tracks on the album and putting him in the studio with Eminem and 50 Cent as well as producer Kanye West.

There are no guarantees in pop music (Dre’s venture into R&B; with the female singer Truth Hurts in 2002 still hasn’t caught fire), but the Game has the kind of supporting cast on his album that is the envy of every young rapper.

If the CD hits as big as expected, he will be the first giant West Coast rap star since another Dre find, Snoop Dogg, a decade ago. The just-released first single, “Westside Story,” celebrates the history of West Coast rap, which has been overshadowed in recent years by East Coast and Southern performers.

Dre was going to use the CD’s seductive beats for his own long-delayed solo album, but he was so impressed by the Game that he gave some of them up for the Game’s CD.

“I’m 100% behind him,” Dre says. “As soon as I heard his demo, I loved his delivery and his vocal tone, and what he had to say. I also loved the fact that he was from my hometown. I’m going to do one more album and then I’m going to devote all my time to producing records and finding new artists.”

A youth in Compton

Dre is across town shooting the new Eminem video and isn’t due at the recording studio for hours, so the Game has plenty of time to relax -- which is a rarity as he races to finish his album. He had been in the studio until 6:30 that morning.

It’s now 3 p.m. and everything is quiet. He’s wearing a Cubs baseball cap (not because he’s a fan, but because he likes the blue and red colors), sweats and the N.W.A medallion.

The Game loved rap growing up in Compton, idolizing N.W.A, whose explosive “Straight Outta Compton” album in the late ‘80s was a blueprint for gangsta rap. But he thought his future was going to be basketball.

The Game, who’s 6-foot-4, was a star guard on the Compton High School team and played regularly with future NBA players, including all-star Baron Davis (godfather to the Game’s year-old son), and Tyson Chandler, the second overall pick in the 2001 draft.

But those plans kept getting disrupted by his behavior. “I had a problem with authority growing up,” he says. “I’d get an A on the math test, then run outside and steal a car.”

The Game’s mother worked the graveyard shift at the post office and his father had behavioral problems of his own, the rapper says.

The darkest day of his childhood was when he and several siblings were placed by child welfare officers in separate foster homes because of complaints about his father, the Game says. The youngster was just starting grade school.

“My foster mother did the best she could with the 12 to 18 kids who were living with her at any one time, but it was devastating not to be able to go to your own mother and talk about your problems and stuff,” he continues. “That’s one of the reasons I turned to the streets at a pretty young age.”

His moment of truth came one 3 a.m. years later. One rule among drug dealers is to never sell out of your residence, but the Game got cocky. He didn’t know who was knocking, but he thought he could make a quick $300 or $400, so he opened his apartment door.

Three men wanted all the drugs. He was shot point blank, and woke up 27 hours later in a hospital. While recuperating, he listened to some of his favorite albums -- by Ice Cube, Public Enemy, Jay-Z, Tupac -- and studied their techniques.

“My album is my story as a whole,” he says. “You got everything from the situation with my dad, the whole foster home thing. There’s a song about my son that takes you from the Lamaze class all the way to the delivery room. I’ve got a song about when I got shot -- my life flashing in front of my eyes. It’s me, it’s my story.”

The Game scoffs at the notion he exaggerated his background for publicity purposes. “If you said something that wasn’t true, someone in your background would tell somebody and it would come out and then your whole story, your whole career might be lost,” he says.

When questioned further about the Game’s past, the rapper’s rep at Aftermath Records volunteers to have Baron Davis confirm the pair’s long-standing friendship.

“He’s a great person and I’m proud of him for surviving some situations that were pretty unbearable,” Davis says two days later by phone. “Basketball took me on a different path in life and now it looks like the music has opened doors for him.”

There’s plenty of hard-core language on the mix tapes the Game put together before starting work on the album, but there’s also something self-affirming about his stories, which are delivered in a natural, everyman style not unlike that of Kanye West and draw images from basketball, rap and the Compton streets.

The single is more a West Coast rap anthem than a personal document, but initial radio response is strong. If the rest of the album captures the more personalized feel of the mix tapes, the CD should be something quite special. What’s welcome about the tapes is that he generally avoids the aggressive posturing that has stripped so much of the commentary and heart from rap in recent years.

Touching a nerve

It may be hard for casual hip-hop fans and, certainly, hip-hop detractors to hear the Game use the words positive and inspirational to describe N.W.A, the Compton rap quintet that included Andre Young (Dr. Dre), Eric Wright (Eazy-E) and O’Shea Jackson (Ice Cube).

The group’s music was seen as so inflammatory that an FBI agent warned it could encourage violence toward law enforcement officers. The charge touches a nerve in the rapper.

“That was all wrong,” he says sharply. “N.W.A gave me the willpower to get up and do something, especially Eric Wright. He showed you can be anything you want to be. I look at Eazy-E as the father I never had, which is why I have the tattoo of him on my arm.”

The Game, who lives in Compton with his girlfriend and their son, Harlem, is so emotional talking about N.W.A that he’s fingering his medallion and speaking as fast as one of his raps.

“The only negative in my record is my negative. It’s like I’m saying, ‘Just listen to me and go left instead of right because I did that already.’ I’m just trying to shed a little light on these situations so that people who grow up in a similar situation don’t feel helpless.”

Robert Hilburn, pop music critic of The Times, can be reached at robert.hilburn@latimes.com