Before The Game signed with Dr. Dre and Aftermath in 2003,he flirted with signing with Suge Knight's Death Row and Puff Daddy's Bad Boy.
At the time, Death Row was on the downslide. 2Pac was dead, and Snoop had left the fold. Their biggest rappers were Eastwood and Crooked 1. While Game respected both rappers, he thought he was better than them.
"I was running around with Suge and Eastwood and my homeboy Sonic for about two months, and I figured out this wasn’t the place for me,” he said. “At that time, I didn't feel like Crooked 1 was better than me ... I remember when they came out with -- I don’t know if it was XXL or The Source cover -- where they had Left Eye on there with Suge and Crooked I, Eastwood and I just felt like I should be on there.
That was the competitive nature of young West Coast n*ggas back then… I just felt like I belonged on records. So I stopped f*cking with them and then I started running with Diddy a little bit and then Diddy, you know, sort of pushed me over to Dre when Dre was ready to sign me.”
The Game is quite a storyteller, so you never know if what he's saying is true. But this seems like it could be true.