From the opening skit where Game tells the story of his beef with 50 Cent it is an album filled with Gang related incidents. In this case he's sitting at a stop light talking to Sway when he's approached by two rival gang members looking to rob him. He closes the intro with "That's what the fuck I'm talking about homie, just can't get away from this shit." In it's purest essence Documentary 2.5 is about trying to escape gang life and the ghetto, but being pulled back in over and over again.

The second track is called Magnus Carlsen and is named after the chess Grandmaster and chess is an idea played with throughout the song. Anderson .Paak is the feature on this track and sets the tone in the opening verse. He begins with:

Tie on a bandana, then we lay him outFighting over two colours in the crayon box. It's no love. It's no love. 40 ounces in my cup, I'm po'd up. We out here killing each other, but so what? Keep it up and there's gon' be no Crips and no Bloods

The point he's trying to stress is that they're essentially killing over nothing but colors when so many reside in the same area and attend the same functions, so there is no difference. Gang contrast with a verse glorifying the gang life and they continue to play on the chess metaphor into the bridge which states "Black and white squares, just depends what side you on." While Game glorifies the gang life throughout the album he comes to realize it isn't as glamorous as he thought.

The third track features Schoolboy Q and Jay Rock. The verse opens with Schoolboy Q boasting about the murders his gang commits but slowly transitions until he realizes just how messed that life really is, because for as many enemies that have been killed, just as many friends have been lost as well. He finishes his verse with "heard drive-bys everyday, seen homies die early age, though we still gang bang anyway." The "we still gang bang anyway," echos throughout the song and is used as a hook and set up to Jay Rock and Game's verses.

Jay Rock's verse is the opposite of Q's. His verse is about the dangers of gang banging. Some of the interesting parts of his verse are as follows:

Gotta keep them antennas up, moving down Central, young niggas with skinnies, moving with them semis, catch your ass leaving the club, murk you at Denny’s, squeeze till it’s empty, it seems so unreal, until the gunfire got you using tables as a shield.

Had that MAC paint on your face like cosmetics, chucking up big ass B’s is my fetish, type of shit that make you go brazy if I let it

Jay Rock knows the lifestyle is crazy. He paints a picture where you have to be cautious of young kids in skinny jeans because they might start shooting too. He relishes the fact that he's lived through it and thinks about the OGs that didn't. He admits that it can drive you crazy if you gang bang, but he still does it anyway.

Game continues Jay Rock's theme of regret and survivor's guilt in his verse. Especially when it comes to him surviving and an innocent person, like the grandmother in his story, ends up becoming a casualty instead. He even goes as far as to call it senseless. Then he begins to offer some insight on why he and other still gang bang even if every fiber of their body tells them it's wrong. He states "niggas don't really like it but we grew up in it, city of angels, belly of the beast get chewed up in it." There doesn't seem to be any escape for Game and the others in the city. We've seen this with Kendrick Lamar on Good Kid m.a.a.d. City. Kendrick isn't a gang banger, but he still got caught up in it. Then Game gives a history lesson why gangs initially started:

Picture us chained together under the boat, that's a Kodak and since today is Thursday, let me hit you with a throwback, stolen identities, God left us here without lowjack, forced to find ourselves, forced to break up outta chains, got tired of getting hanged so we started our own gangs, Tookie Williams (Crip), Sylvester Scott (Blood), seventy two Lil' Country caught a slug and that was the first time a crip ever killed a blood 

The song ends with two gang members approaching Fredrick "Lil Country" Garrett and murdering him while his mother screams out in panic. She attempts to call out to onlookers but everyone ignores her. Flutes begin to play and the next track titled The Ghetto begins to play over her screams.

The Ghetto is interesting track that plays on a lot of issues. Nas plays with the fact that there's no point on fighting over hoods because at the end of the day they're all the same. Part of his first verse follows:

It be jam-packed in front of the stoops in Siberia, same way they are in the middle of Nigeria. Every part of the whole world, there's an area that, if you're poor, another day alive is a miracle. The blocks in Watts got crooked cops that frame the innocent, no different from Flint, Michigan [...] Pretty city, skyscrapers will fool you, look through to, inner cities the rich won't move to, the nice parts, they well-protected by a vanguard, the opposite of how these concentration camps are.

Basically what Nas is getting at is that if you're poor it's the same no matter where you go, especially if you're black. The worst part is that every are has these places. Places where crooked cops will plant drugs on civilians, beat them or worse, because they can. There isn't much a difference between the ghettos of Nigeria, Siberia and America. Just surviving in some of these areas is a blessing when there is a section of their populations that never get to reach 30. In Gang Bang Anyway they mentioned that the city will chew you up and that's what Nas is referring to here. The city will eat you alive that's why it's amazing if you continue to male it through stray bullets, fights, robberies and the police. On the opposite side there's plenty of gated communities that the average person just can't walk into. Not because they're dangerous, but because they don't perpetuate a certain appearance or set of ideals. These people look down on those in the ghetto and maybe host a food drive or some other charity event to boost their own self esteem but don't provide any real long term solution to the problems. Because if it was solved, they will be no different.

The Game follows Nas with a verse about experiences in the ghetto. When it comes to police officers he states:

Streetlights come on, cop cars' lights flicker, they smoke us like cigarettes, need a light, nigga? Used to chastise or string us up to spite niggas.

Asked for license and registration with they gun out the holster, some of us guilty, some of us not, some of us filthy rich, others just watch us niggas drive up the block

Despite what Fox News and CNN say, the police are not angels and often are antagonizers in the neighborhood. Before the age of 21 most black people have had some kind of negative experience with either a police officer or security guard even if they've done nothing wrong at all. An experiences such as being pulled over for speeding yet the officer already has his gun loaded in and his hand as game mentions. Game alludes to that here with the fact that police claim to have a dangerous job, yet only 43 died on duty last year compared to the thousands they killed, many of which were unarmed, they "smoke us like cigarettes." He continues:

We think we keeping it one hundred coming back to the hood, they think we flossin' money, so they pull a ratchet: what's good? It happens in Compton, happens in Queens, happened to Big L, happened to Chinx and 2Pac in that passenger's seat

Sometimes it's internal, happens to you before you happen to bleed

What's beef? Cops killing niggas dead in the streets

So before we look outside, we gotta look within

Here Game is bringing up the fact that police aren't the only people killing black people in the hood. Far too often it's black people killing black people over materialistic things. While artist and other people who have found success outside of the hood may come back just to reminisce we hear about it almost every month someone gets robbed, or in the case of rappers, they get their chain snatched. Some even end up dead like the men game mentioned. It's a two pronged battle, we have to fix ourselves and the issues surrounding us. The song is followed by From Adam.

The song From Adam features Game drunk and almost in tears, which isn't something new for him as he's recorded songs like Start From Scratch and Doctor's Advocate in the past. This song is purely rage about gang banging as a whole, while trying to somehow accept the fact that he was pushed into it, wanting to leave, but being stuck. He opens the track with:

My little nigga Frogg dead, dog, they shot my little nigga in his head, dog. You heard what the fuck I just said, dog! Walk inside my closet like fuck everything red, dog, if you seen your best friend stiff, you would cry too, sometimes I don't even wanna be a Piru

Losing a close friend is always hard, but losing one and feeling somewhat guilty has to be the worst feeling. Game feels he's to blame since Frog was younger than him and probably looked up to him in ways. So Game doesn't even want to be a gang member anymore because of this. But on the same level he states he can't leave because of all the friends he's lost to crips he feels he's representing them by remaining gang affiliated.

Lil Wayne also makes a revelation on the hook singing:

Who killed my homie? I wanna know names. Click-clack explain. I can kill you but ain’t nothing gon' change. But I might do it anyway. You gonna die any way. I’m gonna die any way. We can go any day. It can be any day. But for you, today is the day.

Sure, getting revenge really won't change anything. Friends will still remain dead and the circle of violence will remain unbroken and ready to repeat itself. If revenge is taken does it matter in the long run because in the end we all die and it could really be any day of the week for any of us. In the long run killing for revenge will only make him feel better momentarily. But, he does it anyway. Which happens time and time again on this album, knowing something is wrong or bad for you, but doing it anyway.

The song Gang Related continues the trend with Game looking back down memory lane. In the song he he reflects on how things he used to love just look stupid to him now. He used to love shootouts, but then he got shot and now he has a family. He still can't help but drive through his old neighborhood at night, but he can't look at it during the day because it somehow got worse and it's hard to see. The outro to the song is a voicemail from an unnamed person telling Game don't stop trying to be involved in the gang, because he made it out and he doesn't want to see Game end up another dead rapper like 2Pac as mentioned by the man.

The next song I want to talk about is called My Flag/Da Homies. In contrast to the other themes of the album, this one is unapologetically gang related with just about every person on the track representing a gang, featuring people suck as Mitchy Slick, who you may have seen on gangland and is currently fighting a gang injunction. It definitely feels like a track that glorifies gang banging, but because it provides a sense of belonging for some and a meaning for others. But then, sometimes it's peer pressure as seen in the last moments of the track where a skit plays.

It's followed by Moment of Violence. A song about retaliating against police. The artists on the track consider eye for an eye the only remaining response to police. Wishing to take them away from their family as revenge. Yet, they can't. The song ends with them realize that it only creates more violence if they do, and they've got people to live for. In this case, Game has to care for his sons. A singer backed by a choir sings:

Who's gonna love me now, oh daddy why'd you let me down, down, oh did you forget I was your flesh and blood? I need you to remember me. Ooh praying for the day, cause Mama couldn't raise no man and though she do the things she can, every woman needs a helping hand

This leads to the next two songs, Like Father Like Son 2 and Life. On Like Father Like Son 2, Game realizes he needs to set a better example for his children so they never have to go through the same things he did. On this track he decides that the only reason he'll ever go back to jail is if someone hurts his children. On Life he decides he's finished with all the drugs in his life, except marijuana and apologizes to the mothers of his children. Stating there's things in life he still doesn't understand like how police can murder children like Tamir Rice, but Dylan Roof is still alive. However he realizes he can't solve any of these issues being the same Game he's always been and vows to do better. Coming to the conclusion that he doesn't have to be a killer or represent his gang everywhere because "a real gangster's one who take care of his whole family, like me, even though my baby mama can't stand me."

You can hear Darrell on the CP Time and Powerbomb Jutsu podcasts. He also plays classic arcade games on The Cabinet
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