The craziest thing about video games is how sometimes dudes get so hard up for new ideas that they end up creating the most whacked-out insanely fun and complex product like Def Jam Icon. EA and Def Jam Interactive have created a game that allows you to battle your way through the music industry to become a hip-hop mogul. That's cool and all, but the real fun comes in having to manage the artists in your stable and your money. We found ourselves having to give our (virtual) girlfriend $5000 for a birthday present while keeping E-40 from fighting Young Jeezy and simultaneously trying to get a Ludacris single to top the charts. Maybe we loved all this because it’s an accurate reflection of our own real lives (beating up dudes and managing artists is how we roll at FADER HQ), but the real appeal of the game is the amount of detail that is worked in: T.I.’s beanie is tilted just so, and all of Game’s tattoos are flawlessly reproduced. There’s also MAJOR effort to actually incorporate music into the whole thing. Each background pulses to the beat of the in-game song or any mp3 you want, and if you hit your opponent at the right moment, the song affects the outcome of the hit. So if you’ve always wanted to play as Big Boi beating up Ghostface with, like, a U-God “classic” playing in the background, then you can upload your Hillside Scramblers CD and play away. The biggest WTF moment though, was when we noticed that FADER cover star Kano was included in the game. See, US recording industry? Maybe you should have actually released his album… just saying. More images from DJ:I after the jump.