On Game’s “Red Nation,” and mainstream labels’ inability to understand marketing dance music…

In May 2011, star West coast emcee Game collaborated with superstar of the moment Lil Wayne on gangsta anthem “Red Nation.” Bridging the gap between industrial dance floors and the streets, Cool and Dre screw down 2000 released hard techno classic “Kernkraft 400” by German-based producers Zombie Nation into a trunk-rattling heater. An early trend adopter of the pop similarities between hard core rap and hard core dance, the track on charted in the top 60 on the Billboard Hot 100, undercutting the potential success of Game’s R.E.D. Album. A record that the still hard rhyming emcee wanted to be the call to the world that the hood had never left hip hop alone could’ve proved that the hood had new ears listening.

“R.E.D. Nation” is a pop-dance masterpiece. Yes, it’s Game and Lil Wayne rapping about being two hardscrabble head bussas, but if you listen to bass friendly dance these days, it totally fits dance’s pop expectation. In the hands of urban music executives at Interscope Records, it was a lightweight single, a strange sample hit for a lyrical home run. However, imagine if the track were instead optioned to Interscope’s dance team for promotional assistance? The song was a heavy hitter internationally, reaching #6 on Germany’s urban charts, proof of the crossover appeal in markets where hip hop’s crunkest elements are familiar tropes of underground dance. With dubstep being where it is in the American consciousness, this song had legs, high potential for mainstream success, and was undercut by an inability of a mainstream label to accurately reflect pop culture trends.

The future is now. Those who galvanize culture before culture destroys them are the winners.