The Gift of Game is the debut studio album by the American rap rock band Crazy Town. It was released on November 9, 1999, in the US by Columbia Records. The album yielded the band its biggest hit with "Butterfly" which reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on March 24, 2001.
Worldwide the album sold more than 2.5 million units, with more than 1.6 million in the US alone.
Background
As Crazy Town refused to cede their official website to Columbia Records (as per a contract clause), the record label barred the group from advertising it on the album's artwork. The band circumvented the ban by adding a last-minute outro to the album, titled after the website (www.crazytown.com), and in which the URL is repeating multiple times. A song titled "Lolita" later appeared on Shellshock's solo album Happy Love Sick and her image reappears on Crazy Town's third album The Brimstone Sluggers.
Composition
Musically, The Gift of Game has been described as rap rock hip-hop, and alternative metal.
| rev2 = Kerrang!
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| rev3 = Wall of Sound
| rev3score = 65/100
| rev4 = NME
| rev4score = 3/10
| rev5 = Q
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| rev6 = Sputnikmusic
| rev6score = 1.5/5
Steve Huey at AllMusic described the album as "similar to many other rap-inflected alternative metal albums in that it concentrates on sound over structure, creating macho, aggressive grooves with grinding, noisily textured guitars and the underlying feel of squared-off hip-hop beats". Huey argued that despite signs of Limp Bizkit's "juvenile humor", the album "shows promise". In 2025, Rae Lemeshow-Barooshian of Loudwire included the album in her list of "the top 50 nu-metal albums of all time".
Track listing
- Tracks 15 to 31 are blank, and are each 5 seconds in length.
Charts
Weekly charts
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! scope="col"| Chart (2000–2001)
! scope="col"| Peak<br />position
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!scope="row"|Europe (European Top 100 Albums)
| 8
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Year-end charts
{|class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center;"
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! scope="col"| Chart (2001)
! scope="col"| Position
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! scope="row"| Austrian Albums (Ö3 Austria)
| 40
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!scope="row"|Canadian Albums (Nielsen SoundScan)
|88
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! scope="row"| European Albums (European Top 100 Albums)
| 81
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! scope="row"| German Albums (Offizielle Top 100)
| 31
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! scope="row"| Swiss Albums (Schweizer Hitparade)
| 67
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! scope="row"| US Billboard 200
| 63
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