“300 Bars & Runnin’” – The Game
(Words: The Game, music: a lot of people, available on You Know What It Is Volume 3 mixtape, 2005)

Extended freestyle tracks remind me of extended drum solos – the technique and endurance demands respect even if the music output remains non-essential. On “300 Bars & Runnin’,” The Game unloads on G-Unit and its affiliated rappers for almost fourteen minutes. Lyrically, The Game sounds like he’s found a direct passageway into his surreal stream of consciousness. He repeats ideas and lines for his three hundred bars, yet barely takes a breath. What it lacks in clever turns of phrase and editorial precision (it is a freestyle, after all), it makes up for in endurance and bravado. Clearly, The Game isn’t looking for a diss track that cuts like either Nas’ “Ether” or Jay-Z’s “The Takeover.” Instead, he’s happy to go with volume over quality, unloading line after line as the beat keeps shifting between both hip hop classics and contemporaries.

Still, “300 Bars” makes for a compelling listen if just for the cavalcade of beats behind his flow. In an odd way, The Game’s near constant barrage blends into the background, somehow in support of the different tracks his DJ spins for him. In particular, The Game catches his second (well, maybe his third or fourth, to be honest) wind around the ten minute mark just as Kanye West’s “Diamonds from Sierra Leone” kicks in. To be fair, I think even I would sound good rapping over this beat, but The Game snaps out of a bit of a lull, riding out the last four minutes of his marathon.

It’s worth noting that this came to mind because today is the 300th consecutive day I’ve written about a song. Unlike the Game, I’m not done at three hundred, though. I think it’s safe to declare at this point, but it’s my plan to finish the year writing about a different artist every single day (with the exception that a solo project and a band are two separate entities). I realize that not every post is as strong as I’d like it to be, but I’ve been happy to hit a few moments like the ten minute mark on this track where everything seems to fall into place.

More on The Game: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm