It’s the rap game, the rap game!
This show has re-mewed my love for rap, my old Apple music playlists, the use of compact discs, and my old school stereo!
Sometimes I wonder why Netflix has incomplete collections. For example, it has the first 7 Fast & Furious movies, but not the 8th. It had a couple of seasons of ‘Dragon’s Den’ but not the later ones. And we loved the single season of ‘Grand Designs’ but that season was a unicorn. And somehow it has season 2 of ‘The Rap Game’, but not seasons 1, and 3 through to 6? *Shrug*.
However, the one season they do have of The Rap Game, it’s simply awesome! For those who are unfamiliar with the show, it’s a reality TV show where 5 kids compete for a contract with Jermaine Dupri’s record label So So Def.
For me it reminds me a bit of the Donald Trump series ‘The Apprentice’, with talented individuals, competing in weekly challenges, learning craft lessons along the way, introduced to influential industry heavies, with the prospect to work for the Man- in this case, the man is Jermaine Dupri!
Thankfully there aren’t weekly firings (as I don’t think the kids could handle it), but there is a weekly sorting of talent/performances by the way of a ‘Hit list’. But where they’re place on the list has little repercussion to the end result of the contest.
The contestants/Rappers range from an 11-year-old to a pair of 16-year-olds (two girls and 3 guys)- who are talented writers (bar one), they have great rhythm and flow, stage presence, and they are highly marketable. Watching it I’m so glad it’s them and not me, as it’s virtually my worst nightmare- to be creative under pressure and working to a 1-2-day time constraint, needing to memorise lyrics, and able to spit them back under pressure and in front of a crowd or an icon who you look up to. *Shudders *. So, it makes the viewing even more riveting, as these 11-16-year-old kids are pulling it off and smashing it!
And what makes the show even more spicy, is that they all live together in a mansion, and each of the kids had to bring along with them a parent to act as their Manager. So, if the drama of spitting bars ain’t enough? You have the drama between the kids, between their parents, and between parents and parents! I don’t know what you call it, but there is a fair few occasion where parents get into each other’s faces and they do that back-hand smack into their own palm thing, smacking their hands in cadence with their words emphasizing their frustration! It’s gold I tell you! Haaha.
After 10 episodes I have a greater appreciation for rappers as it’s a cutthroat industry, I’m a bigger fan of Jermaine Dupri now as he comes off as a very stable and balanced individual, and it’s renewed my love for 90-00s rap and all my old pre-loved rap albums- I was just thinking of what to do with my stereo system and hundreds of CDs as I haven’t used either in years since starting to stream music. But since finishing The Rap Game, I’ve dug out my old CDs and I have to say, there is nothing like the sound quality of a physical disc!
If you want to check out ‘The Rap Game’, please click HERE! So So Def!
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