The Game has raised some controversial claims about his relationship with Pop Smoke before his demise.
The Compton rapper, as a guest on The Full Send Podcast hosted by Kyle Forgeard, Aaron Steinberg, and Salim Sirur, shared quite a lot about his background and his journey through street life growing up in Compton.
It’s no news that The Game, just like many rappers who grew up in the streets, is one of those who was raised in a challenging environment. Surrounded by gang culture, dr*gs, and violence, he had quite a share of its consequences before finding himself. During the show, the rapper revealed his family had very strong ties to gangs and were members themselves.
This all created a chaotic life for him, who adopted the lifestyle until he got shot in 2001 over a faulty dr*g deal. That incident served as a lesson and a turning point, after which he took his music career more seriously to get to where he is today.
Speaking on The Full Send Podcast, The Game, when asked about what advice he’d give a kid growing up in street life, said:
“I don’t even think a kid these days really needs me to tell them that. I think that once you open your phone on Instagram, you can see a plethora of ways to make it out of the hood or things that you can do. So if we had phones back in the day and Instagram and all these apps, I mean, we could kind of see—like, you can log on Instagram, and on your explore page, like a f*kin’ vacation might pop up, you know what I’m saying? Or somewhere like the Maldives. You might see, like, a baddie walking in the Maldives, and you might—like, if I saw that as a kid, I’d be like, ‘Damn, I want to go there.’ Then I would have aspirations and dreams that were sort of in line with that type of lifestyle. But back in the day, we didn’t have sh*** but like, uh, maybe like six channels: Two, Four, Five, Seven, Eleven, and Thirteen. And if you didn’t have cable, then you really didn’t have sh**, and half the time, like, those channels were blurry as f*k or staticky, or someone was watching the TV, and you couldn’t watch. So you only knew what was in there exactly.”
Moving forward, The Game explained that the ki**ings in the industry have made him build a shield around himself, enabling him to filter whatever energy or people he lets into his space and life. He said he could tell if a lady is a gold digger or not just from having a conversation with her for like 5 to 10 minutes and knowing which to simply flip and which to draw closer.
Kyle Forgeard asked him [The Game] to elaborate more on what he means by “being big on energy”:
“Can you describe what you mean by being big on energy?”
He [The Game] replied:
“I will just tell you what exactly it means. If I’m somewhere and I feel a dark energy, I’m just leaving immediately because I either know that that means somebody in here has ill intentions or I’m gonna have to like f**k somebody up. So I just bounce, like, every single time.”
He then recalled how rappers like Tupac, Nipsey, and Pop Smoke died while stating how dark the streets are.
“Before Pop Smoke died, I always made sure that, like, he was cool when he came to LA. I was just always reaching out. And I do that a lot with younger rappers. I think that, especially with all the dr**s going around and all the rappers getting m*rd***d, and just going around in life, I just feel everybody needs a shoulder and just to notice somebody else in the same position. I got love for him.”
“Did Pop Smoke, like, reach back out to you?”
Steiny asked.
The Game responded:
“Yeah, he was like, ‘Thank you,’ and, you know, appreciated it.”
