When The Game recently decided he wanted to remix his 2005 hit “Hate It or Love It,” “Everybody thought that I was crazy,” he says. “They’re like, ‘This is a classic. You shouldn’t touch this. How are you going to make it better?’ And I thought to myself, ‘I love challenges, so how am I going to make it better?’”

Without original collaborator 50 Cent on the hook — which two decades ago helped the song reach No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 — The Game brought Snoop Dogg into the fold, helping the Doggfather to write a verse that recalls his iconic counting flow on Dr. Dre’s 1992 G-funk classic “Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang.” Both Game and Snoop made references to the original “Hate It or Love It,” while saluting West Coast legends including Nipsey Hussle, 2Pac and Ice Cube. A sample of Bobby Caldwell’s 1978 hit “What You Won’t Do for Love” — not present on the 2005 track — tied the new version together.

“Love It or Hate It,” The Game figured, would generate buzz for the August release of his 11th studio album, The ­Documentary III — and serve as connective tissue between his new project and his debut album, The Documentary, which featured “Hate It or Love It” and stamped him as a torchbearer of West Coast hip-hop in the aughts.

“I knew for my core fans, them being able to go down memory lane and in such a nostalgic way early on in the album would set the tone for the listener and kind of trick your ears into understanding that this album is going to be a classic album too,” he says. “So when you listen to the song, you think you’re listening to ‘Hate It or Love It’ because you’re used to it, but you’re not. That’s just me playing mind games with my fans — and even myself.”

“Love It or Hate It” was part of a trio of rap remixes that arrived this summer — and all reanimated existing hits. Meek Mill recalled his millennial motivational scripture “Dreams and Nightmares” for the new “Nightmares to Dreams,” and DJ Shadow and Run the Jewels celebrated 10 years of their collaborative “Nobody Speak” with “Nobody Speak Part 2,” which featured buzzy rappers Denzel Curry and TiaCorine.

Crate-digging, and flipping known intellectual property, have always been fundamental to hip-hop. Nas released a sequel to “N.Y. State of Mind” (“N.Y. State of Mind Pt. II”) five years after dropping his classic Illmatic (the revamped track appeared on his 1999 album, I Am…), and more recently, Lil Uzi Vert released “P2,” a sequel to the top 10 2017 smash “XO Tour Llif3” that arrived three years after the original and used its same hypnotic melody and TM88 production. (“P2,” which featured on 2020’s Eternal Atake, reached No. 11 on the Hot 100.)

Reworking catalog hits of the past — albeit by other artists — has previously proved to be a formula for chart success, given how TikTok and social media have disrupted traditional music consumption methods. Just consider how Metro Boomin, The Weeknd and 21 Savage’s “Creepin’ ” remade Mario Winans’ “I Don’t Wanna Know” and scored a top five Hot 100 hit nearly two decades after the Bad Boy singer’s original.

With the genre’s scarcity on the charts in 2026 — so far, Drake is the only rapper to notch a top 10 hit on the Hot 100 this year as a lead artist — flipping a once-big hit might seem like an easy remedy. And considering the dearth of new mainstream stars — outside of Doechii and Don Toliver, other emerging talents have yet to commercially break through — hip-hop veterans have more of an opening to notch genuine hits.

But among The Game, Meek Mill and DJ Shadow, only Meek’s “Nightmares to Dreams” reached the Hot 100, landing at No. 82 for just one week before falling off the chart. Overall, these remixes failed to generate a lasting buzz in a current mainstream climate that’s shown to be less hospitable to hip-hop than it has been in the recent past. The Game credits the genre’s lackluster showing lately to a modern disconnect from the generation of rap he was raised in where titans sparred in collaboration and juicy remixes ruled.

But a recent text exchange with ­310babii gave him some hope. The rising West Coast rapper reached out to him looking for advice on improving his artistry — the first time The Game says that a rap newcomer has personally sought him out.

And while the two haven’t revealed any plans to work together just yet, cross-­generational collaboration has proved mutually beneficial for veterans and rising talent across genres and eras, from Jay-Z co-signing an emerging Drake in 2009 to Tyler, The Creator guesting on rising rapper AZ Chike’s single “Look Like My Mama” this August. So while remixing one’s own work of the past may be a cool curio for serious fans, collaboration among genre titans and newcomers could be the real key to getting rap back in the conversation and on the charts. “Everyone’s so selfish and all about ‘me,’ when it should be about us,” The Game says. “And fans know the difference.”

This story appears in the Oct. 3, 2026, issue of Billboard.