50 Cent’s demo for The Game’s 2005 single “Higher” from The Documentary album has surfaced online.
In the clip, the Get Rich or Die Tryin‘ OG raps to the Dr. Dre and Mark Batson-produced beat in the same style and using similar lyrics to the final version that wound up on Game’s debut album.
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50 Cent has long maintained he wrote around six songs that ended up The Documentary, some full and others only choruses, including “Westside Story,” “Hate It Or Love It” and “How We Do.” The songs were originally intended for his sophomore album The Massacre but Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine requested he give them to Game.
“They said, ‘The kid can rap, but he’s not a great songwriter,’” 50 said of Game in a 2015 interview. “When Jimmy called for me to do it I was like, ‘Alright, cool, I’ll fix it,’ and I gave it [to Game]. I only worked with him for about, I think, four days.”
Listen to the demo version of “Higher” here and check out the finished track below.
The “Higher” album cut included lyrics such as “I got the lollipop if you wanna lick/ Or you can take a ride on the magic stick,” which 50 Cent mentions in the demo. “Magic Stick” is also the name of Lil Kim’s 2003 single featuring 50 Cent. It’s a phrase he helped popularize during the 2000s.
The resurfaced demo appears to corroborate 50 Cent’s 15-year-old claim he wrote or helped write the majority of hits on Game’s major label debut, something Mr. Los Angeles Confidential continually denies.
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In March, Game and Wack 100 claimed Game wrote “What Up Gangsta” for 50 Cent, which Sha Money XL refuted. As the former G-Unit Records president wrote on Instagram, “all [cap emojis] all lies all for attention.”
The Documentary arrived in January 2005 via Aftermath/Interscope and G-Unit with additional features from Eminem, Nate Dogg and Faith Evans. The project debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, selling over 586,000 units in its first week.
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In March 2005, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified the album 2x-platinum and eight months later, it had sold 2.5 million copies in the U.S.
Seventeen years later, Game is getting ready to unleash his new album Drillmatic: Heart Vs. Mind, but only time will tell if it will have the amount of success Game saw early in his career. The project has a scheduled release date of Friday (August 12).
