Classic for me, it was an album the West needed at the time...
I think Game was one of the last artists who had a lot of that old skool or traditional hype around a debut for months on end... He was on magazines, TV, mixtapes and blogs/forums etc
Feels like after him Soundcloud/indi rappers came around and artists with a hot song started appearing out of nowhere and dropped their albums a week or two later, then it was on to the next one...