Ahhhhhhh!!!

I'm working on my Michael Jackson reflections (and will get back to Killa Caaaaaaam after that), but I just wanted to call your attention to this profoundly disturbing piece on The Root. It's called "The New King of Pop is a Queen: Why Beyonce is the only plausible heir to Michael Jackson's sparkly glove." I've offered my inchoate arguments for why I feel Beyonce is essentially the devil on numerous occasions, so I won't elaborate on why this is so insane, but really, Beyonce? Could you imagine two more unlike artists? Michael Jackson, the epitome of crazed sincerity, every nutty line of every song deeply felt, and Beyonce, pure phoniness. Jackson, whose music revolves around paranoia, loneliness, love, violence, and Beyonce, whose great themes, when she's not uncorking some bullshit ballad to keep the older members of her audience content, are (a) snagging a baller whose pockets are full-grown, (b) her aching desire to be fucked by a baller with full-grown pockets, and (c) the ass-shaking rituals required to snag the full-grown-pockets baller. That's it! No really, that's it, and it's not even like her vocals have any personality to them or like the music she sings this shit over is any good, a Rich Harrison beat here and a 'Single Ladies' there aside. And she's the heir? JT is a callow MJ imitator who's basically copied all the superficial details of Jackson's music while sucking out all the life and weirdness from it and replacing them with a mildly charming, mostly dorky vanilla void, but at least he's made two pretty good albums and a handful of great songs. (He's still not my choice for MJ heir though; that would be... well I'll get to that.) What has Beyonce done? Anyway, just for kicks, Ms. Olopade's reasons, word for word, Beyonce is the closest thing to an MJ heir.

1. Her work ethic.
2. Her daring musical choices.
3. Her chameleonic artistic presence.
4. She is already one of the most famous people on the planet.
5. She too was a child star in a kiddie group, and she too forged a solo career. So their biographies are similar.
6. 'Crazy In Love' was a great song. [It actually was.] The infectious hook and horns produced a sound completely unexpected in mainstream pop or R&B. [Yes, but then Rich used the same sound to better effect in 'One Thing' - okay, maybe Crazy's the better song, judged in isolation from the fact of Beyonce's disgustingness and Amerie's limited but real appeal, but the point is, you can't give Beyonce that much credit for one smart decision a producer made.]
7. Her style is outrageous, she wears a gold-plated bodysuit in her new video. If Michael were a woman he'd probably be doing the same thing. [You know what, I can play this game too. Kanye dresses ridiculously and, like MJ, his sexuality is a matter of some debate. MJ got a lot of plastic surgery and essentially killed himself; Kanye's mom killed herself getting plastic surgery. Kanye has sold many records, and though he wasn't actually a child star, I'm sure he won 3rd place in some talent show in 4th grade and proudly displays this award next to his cherished life-size Jeff Koons sculpture of a teddy bear. Jackson recorded a lot of crappy songs (and a few good ones) about the evils of tabloid journalism; Kanye has continued in this fine tradition with the witty "ugh, the paparazzi/I hate them more than the fucking Nazi," and sundry other bits of garbage. Michael made 'Billie Jean,' best pop tune of the past 30 years; Kanye butchered it on the 25th Anniversary Edition. Kanye, the heir to Michael Jackson! Shit, I bet Brandon Soderberg has already written some totally serious piece about it.]
   
8. There's "the magnitude of her fame." The magnitude, admittedly, isn't as great as MJ's magnitude; "frat boys look but don't buy." [Because, unlike the women who love her music, we're not busy using it as an instruction manual for how to become a diva or snag a baller, nor do we lean on it as a justification for our slutty actions. Sans some kind of relationship to Beyonce's lyrics on a fairly specific lifestyle level, why would anyone want to listen to her crap? Musically it's just not very good music.] But it's pretty big magnitude nonetheless. She's sold a lot of records and people went to see Obsession. That she can't act doesn't matter; "the point is that she's out there." She also endorses makeup and does disingenuous PSA's for hunger with Hamburger Helper. That is, she endorses Hamburger Helper.
9. She's been to the White House four times. She performed at the inaugural ball.
   
10. She has a high level of confidence. In her 'Ego' video, she lip-syncs to her disgusting big dick joke song in fishnets. And there you have it, ten sound reasons for why Beyonce is the new Queen of Pop. No homophobic pun intended.
    

Gucci Mane Is A Good Rapper

Did people ever actually eat this shit?

I just wanted to state publicly that I was wrong. Gucci Mane is a good rapper. On occasion he's prone to feats of mind-numbing retardation, he can be awfully mealy-mouthed, to the point where he ruins his often-quite-clever lyrics, he only raps about the same two or three subjects and over the same sorts of beats, causing most of his songs to be totally indistinguishable from each other, and his fans really overstate their case (pace the bizarre "Gucci's a wordsmith, he uses big words like wonderful and awesome in awesome ironic ways" blow-up a couple weeks ago). But he's also a really good rapper, one who has the capacity to surprise you lyrically, wow you with his flow, and amuse with his ad-libs and varied deliveries. One who can, when he's on, make a really hot line out of something quite prosaic like "So Icy is my company, and millions made monthly." Songs from artists I don't give a fuck about (Mario, Mariah, Trey Songz) become must-repeats because he's on them. He needs to improve leaps and bounds if he ever wants to make a classic album, become anything more than a way smaller version of the frustrating phenomenon that is Lil Wayne, or even become a rapper I and many others like me would enjoy listening to for any sustained period of time, but, as things stand right now, he's probably the only guy out there whose every song you owe the courtesy of a listen. (Even if they all sound alike.) That said, I fully expect this guy to never triumph over his deficits and make the album he's theoretically capable of, a la Wayne, Chamillionaire (what happened there?), arguably Cam (I'm not as big a Purple Haze fan as some), and, just for the sake of random controversy, Lil Flip, whom it's become unfashionable to like but was a really great rapper for a stretch, around the time he appeared on 'Ridin Spinners,' 'Like a Pimp,' 'State Your Name Gangsta,' 'Welcome To The South," "From The South," etc. So there you go.

R.I.P Michael Jackson

Master P - Psycho Rhymes.

When Cam Could Still Rap (Friendship)

Back when 'It's Goin' Down' was all the rage, my sister and I used to find Nitti's intro the funniest thing and repeat it in the car ad nauseam, for somewhat obscure reasons. I think, though, that it had something to do with the very proprietary sense you get about their relationship in that intro, coupled with the impression Nitti gives that they're practically strangers ("I want to introduce you to another motherfucker out my squad... this nigga goes by the name of Joc (Joc??)... he resides in College Park, right?"). And surely enough, by just the next year they weren't speaking anymore over money issues, though apparently that's been resolved. The art of what I'll call, for lack of a decent term, the plug in rap (not plug-in rap, the plug, full stop, in rap), whether done by a mixtape DJ, a producer, a label owner, or a superior artist, is something that hasn't been given much if any sustained analysis in rap blogland. Yet a plug can set the tone for and totally alter a record. As practiced by the Nittis and Diddys of the world, a plug can devalue a record, make it seem like a coldly calculated piece of product we shouldn't bother caring about (though this is mitigated at times in Diddy's case by his seemingly very sincere conviction in the excellence of whatever crappy artist he's pushing at the moment - but then that too is canceled out by the sense that he's bullshitting us, whether willfully or whether he deludes himself into thinking that, say, Loon is good so he can fool us next). In the case of, say, Baby on old Wayne or B.G. records, one's enjoyment of jeune Wayne/prime B.G. is reduced quite a bit by the reminder that we're witnessing a sickeningly exploitative, both financially and sexually, homo-pedophiliac jumpoff. (Pure speculation about the sexual part but I wouldn't at all be surprised if this was the reason Baby signed so many kids and adopted at least one, that and they're easier to cheat.) In the case of Jay plugs on Bleek records, at first there's something touching about Jay's belief in the guy, but by the point of 'Dear Summer' getting thrown on 534 and Jay's kind offer to leave a little something for Bleek in his will, or even the fact that a 534 existed at all, one started to get a queasy feeling that Jay enjoyed making a public spectacle of Bleek's total dependence on him. But then there are plugs that can elevate the most pedestrian record into something quite special, either simply by the charismatic authority of the co-sign, or, more interestingly, by a performance of the friendship between plugger and pluggee. As is the case with so many of the small things that go into making great rap, here Cam was a master.

A. Basic Plugs

Cam's work is littered with some of the best rapping you'll ever hear about friendship, and perhaps that will be the subject of a separate post. (To give one example, consider Freeky Zeek, who becomes an almost mythic figure just by Cam's talking about him so much.) But today we're just going to be talking about Cam's plugs for artists on their own shit. Some are very simple, though none the less effective; one of my favorites is on 'Stop-N-Go,' where JR Writer's handed probably one of the most memorable introductions to a career in rap of all time. (Technically he first shows up on Juelz's debut album a year prior, but who cares.) Cam, after affectionately running down a list of the artists on his roster, with little terms of endearment for each, announces, in what sounds like the voice of God, if God were a Diplomat, "the Writer of Writers - JR" to the world, and without missing a beat JR springs to life, as if he were some internal rhyming monster Cam cooked up in his basement. And thus the short-lived legend of JR Writer was born, through no small help from Cam. Not sure there's anything half as captivating or razor-sharp on Crime Pays as those two seconds. A slightly more complicated version of this dynamic is Cam's fabulous cheerleading on Juelz's first single, 'Santana's Town,' a song that's structured around Cam's voice (he starts it, he ends it, he does the hook) and is terribly convincing as an announcement of the arrival of Juelz as Next Big Thing, except, of course, when Juelz is rapping. When Cam says at the end that "that boy got that crack," you really believe it. You can't build, alas, a whole song around this sort of thing (although see below), but in a way Cam's talent for braggadocio is most appealing when he's using it to brag about others. Of all the Cam phrases that stick in my head as I go about my daily life, perhaps my favorite is at the end of his second verse on 'Bout It Bout It Pt. 3":

Pies get eight done, Dipset don't play none,
Jim Jones, Freeky, Killa and The Great One - Santana

Here and elsewhere, Cam has a talent for mythologizing that's totally persuasive even as you know it's total nonsense.

B. Performing Friendship

Far more interesting than Cam's simple plugs are his plugs where he acts out his friendship with the plugged artist. The video for S.A.N.T.A.N.A., pictured above, is a graphic illustration of this dynamic. S.A.N.T.A.N.A. is a pretty insufferable, though somehow addictive, chipmunk rap song. The sample (of someone saying 'Santana,' along with some crap about how he squeezes hammers) is sped up to the point where it's probably been clinically proven to damage the hearing of dogs, and Juelz doesn't really help matters. Yet Cam redeems the whole enterprise with his wacky decision to stand next to Juelz in a huge fur coat and lip-sync the chipmunk. (That's what he's doing in the still - lip-syncing 'Santana' and pointing to Juelz.) What was a really annoying, clunkily rapped song from Santana about how he's such a super guy turns into a video about a bizarre but sweet friendship between two guys in matching furs. By lip-syncing the chipmunk, Cam flips the obnoxious egotism of the production into a video about a guy who's so tight with his friend that he's way beyond just doing guest cheerleading on his friend's record, he'll actually lip-sync a chipmunk saying his friend's name over and over. It's like a meta-Santana's Town.

There are plenty more cases of amicable cheerleading in Cam's work; I particularly love 'Un Kasa,' the opening track of Diplomatic Immunity, where Cam repeats in seeming amazement every shitty line that comes out of the Krayon Man Rockstar's mouth. But now I want to turn my attention to something quite different, songs where Cam speaks on behalf of his friend and the artist he's plugging. I'm thinking of course of 'I Am Dame Dash' and 'This Is Jim Jones.' The conceit of 'I Am Dame Dash,' if you've never heard this novel piece of work, is that, since Dame can't rap, he needs Cam and Jim Jones to rap "about how I got that money and copped them cakes" for him. You could look at it as a unique product of Dame's megalomaniacial imagination, but it's also arguably a song with its roots in that forgotten art, the DJ song. (That is, those old-school songs where the rapper talks about what a great guy his DJ is.) Jim, predictably, raps about himself, but Cam offers a beautiful little mini-biography of his man:

In '87, dog, my man Dame was a cake chopper
Eighth chopper, now he got a gray chopper
Harlem, Brooklyn, Philly, the whole states proper
Shrimp, steak, 42nd, they ate lobsters
He used to stack up his chips
Crashed up his whip lookin' back at a bitch
Left it, 'F' it, we bout to get twelve Jeeps...

That said, there's something a little forced about Cam's guest spot; he doesn't rap about Dame with a great deal of joy or even that undeserved sense of awe with which he frequently speaks of Juelz, 'The Great One.' You don't get the sense he likes Dame a great deal, and ultimately his verse feels less like a gesture of sincere friendship, though it clearly is that to an extent, than a returned favor. The opposite is the case of 'He Is Jim Jones,' probably the prettiest thing in the Dipset canon. Over a gorgeous Heatmakers beat - warm strings and a sample of Terry Huff, sped-up to the point of incomprehensibility, that sounds like a sweetly warbling bird - Cam shows up. So often a snarling amoral monster, here he's all warmth. Cam announces "my man Jim Jones," and then looks back on their many years of friendship in his daffy way, years filled, he says, with "a lot of devastation, larceny, defeat, misconceptions." But now is no time to look back on such miseries, not over this beautiful beat, so "fuck all that," Cam says - "I don't know what that's about but fuck all that," fuck the misfortunes he and his best friend in the world were dealt. Now is the time to look forward to their future, to Jim's future. "It's your turn, you up nigga, let's go!", Cam says, and off Jim goes. At first, of course, you think what a shame it is that this gorgeous beat is being wasted on a clod who says, in consecutive lines, that he's "an addictive obsession" and "my dick's an obsession." But then Cam comes back to deliver the hook:

This is Jim Jones, he's breezin' on chrome
Your best bet is leave him alone
O.G. in them stones, spent G's on them stones
Now mami, just sing me the tone

and any infelicity in Jim's rapping is forgotten. Every man, you think, should get a pocket symphony written to his life as beautiful as this. His ordinariness becomes besides the point, or rather it is the point, and when Jim cries "we did it, we did it!" you almost want to be his friend too.

The Diplomats, 'Stop-N-Go,' Diplomatic Immunity 2 (2004).

Juelz Santana f. Cam'ron, 'Dipset (Santana's Town),' From Me to U (2003).

The Diplomats, 'Un Casa,' Diplomatic Immunity (2003).

Dame Dash f. Cam'ron & Jim Jones, 'I Am Dame Dash,' Dame Dash Presents: Paid In Full Soundtrack (2002).

Jim Jones f. Cam'ron, 'This Is Jim Jones,' On My Way To Church (2004).

My Thoughts On Come Home With Me

Someone asked in comments so I thought, why bury my thoughts on this important transitional album in Cam's career. First, I should say that I generally hate pre-CHWM Cam, some great songs like 'Pull It,' 'S.D.E.,' and 'Horse and Carriage' notwithstanding. He's a completely different, far more conventional rapper in that period (this is why on message boards and really purist blogs you see a lot of "Cam fell off after S.D.E., my favorite Cam shit, besides the immortal [correction: totally worthless 'conceptual' crap] D'rugs is on some Children Of The Corn mixtape, bring the old Killa Cam back, blah blah blah); he also had a really annoying, high-pitched voice and accent that somehow he lost at the age of 26. Maybe puberty came late for Cam. Or the IBS had palliative effects on his vocals. Anyway, there are still traces of the old Cam on CHWM, so that always rankles me a bit. The full-fledged Don of Dipset persona doesn't really get filled out until Diplomatic Immunity. Other than that, before I get into the main thrust of my attack on the record, some positives. The album undeniably contains his best commercial work, stuff that's a lot more catchy and accessible than anything that would come later, yet doesn't really make any compromises (well, almost). So there's something to be said for those two huge singles. "On Fire Tonight," Stop Calling," and the hilarious part on "Boy Boy" where Cam pretends to be a woman complaining that he's destroying her ovaries and uterus, and then replies, "RELAX, I'm doing this" all easily make the Misogynist Rap Hall of Fame. And who doesn't love the bit on 'Losing Weight' about the girl who will poison your relish and piss in your lemonade? And the opening lines of the intro ("I advise you to step, son, before I fuck your moms, make you my stepson, you'll be calling me Dad'ron")? It's Cam, so of course it's all eminently quotable.

Other than the tracks mentioned though, and Cam's lyrical insanity, I've always felt most of it is Cam's attempt to do a fairly straight Roc-a-Fella record, or rather, maybe it's Just Blaze's attempt to squeeze a conventional album out of Cam. Either way, big mistake. Something like 'Welcome To New York City,' besides Juelz's spectacular hook, is a total failure. Sure, Jay's verse would have been great on a stand-alone Jay song, but the idea of putting these two together on the same rah-rah anthem makes no sense, and that's apparent from the moment Cam opens his mouth, when he starts retreating into this unfamiliar territory of Infamous-quoting classicism. 'Losing Weight,' similarly, kinda works, but it shouldn't; Just seems to be attempting to recreate 'Streets Is Watching' or some other similarly cinematic with a capital 'c,' ominous penitentiary chances tune, but he's giving it to the wrong rapper. I've never quite sorted out what the 'Losing Weight' series (which continues through 'Harlem Streets' and arguably 'I.B.S.') is really about , but it's clearly much more about an internal struggle than any sort of external risk, which Cam would never admit to fearing. Just later figures out how to produce for someone with such a cartoonish, almost inhuman sense of invincibility on 'I Really Mean It,' but here he keeps trying to give Cam stuff that would be better suited for Jay or Bleek. Most obviously in the case of the awful Roc posse cut, which seems to just exist to demonstrate that Cam was in a whole different universe than his labelmates (although Beans has a great verse in his very earthbound way). And when Just's not doing it, lesser producers are squeezing him into equally misfitting concepts - the love song (which Cam makes work, but it's not quite on his own terms), the "this is what my childhood was like" song, the "no album that's trying to be important would be complete without a homage to Pac" song, the tribute to his dead comrade song, and even the singles. Finally, the album of course suffers from too much J&J in their we-can't-rap-a-lick-and-we're-proud-of-it height.

When Cam Could Still Rap (Well), 'Lord You Know' Edition/Kanye's A Biter

As I imagine many of you know, 'Lord You Know' began its ill-fated life back in 2003 as a Heatmakers-lite, Sam Cooke-sampling mixtape cut, featuring a blasphemic chipmunked sample of Cooke's 'A Change Is Gonna Come' on the hook and a raw Juelz batting cleanup. The twisted humor (or, depending on how, um, progressive your views on drugs and incarceration are, the perfect appropriateness) of Cam appropriating Cooke's civil rights anthem to decry his drug-lord friend's ten-year sentence was, I imagine, lost on the Cooke estate. So back to the drawing board, where Cooke got replaced by Jaheim - real even trade there - and Juelz's formally messy but quite affecting, triumphant, and, dare I say, even visionary verse got replaced by a virtuosic 16 from Cam that, given the context, is both a little too technically showy and a whole lot too concerned with his beef-stew G2 and GQ wardrobe to have any business being inserted into this song. Given the loss of the sample, the Juelz verse, which explicitly engages with and quotes the Cooke original (his verse actually begins, "now I was born by the river in a little tent/little gate, little fence, I climbed over"), may have had to go, but it's quite a loss. At their collaborative best, there was a humanism to Juelz, or at the very least a youthful optimism, that leavened Cam's world-weary cynicism. (Indeed, in the endlessly entertaining but ultimately pretty bleak universe of classic Dipset Cam, isn't, oddly enough, Juelz's rising stardom Cam's sole point of hope for the future? How many Cam tracks are a grim catalogue of rapes, murders, coke sales, and sundry other horrors, only to end with him urging us to "watch Santana"? Cam on Crime Pays, bereft of Dipset members to shout out, is very much like a pathetic cult leader who's lost his acolytes, but also like a father who's lost his son.) That's very much the case here.

At any rate, the version with Jaheim was the one that ended up on Rap City. Which unfortunately is where it ended. As Cam immortally explained on 'Stop-N-Go,' "Purple Haze will be out this December 7th. Sorry for the delay. But it's business, never personal. New people, new money. I had to get that check." With the enormous delay, 'Lord You Know' had grown stale, and Cam left it off the album in favor of its abysmal B-side, 'Hey Lady.' So it often goes for first singles off pushed-back albums. Next disc, Cam learned, and put all his best songs out regardless of age, upon which he was of course bashed for hawking an album full of old material. To which I say, fuck that. If it weren't for idiots constantly fiending for new material, Purple Haze would be one song closer to being the album of the century.

______________________________

Listen, with my muscle you'll be dazzled, but hustlin's a hassle
Percocet, Demerol, capsules of Paxil
Cops wanna cuff you, niggas wanna clap you
Bitches might burn you, they runnin' with that clap too
But the monster made it, do it for those incarcerated
Had it confiscated, hate it
When they take powder, upstate he take showers
Baby mom on Greyhound for eight hours
See her man face to face through a glass
On the phone, ten years he got chasin' that cash
Cocaine, he had the game in a smash
Fell like the towers when the planes went on crash
It wasn't 9/11, but it was 911
Gave him 9 plus 1, dropped a dime on dunn
I told him get his nine and run
Turned himself in, I had to find that dumb, that's too long

Aiyyo them niggas from the 3-2, said I can't breeze through
The forty if I cop bottles, we can't believe you
Me, who? Please, boo, landin' in that G2,
Same color as beef stew, favorite letters: GQ
That's me, true, peach blue, Hebrew
Lawyer on my side keep me out of jail, the fee stew, steep, whoo
But it might lead to, that R2D2, the mobsters creep through
We the new PE, shittin, PU
To the hood y'all don't need me, I need you
'Cause my mission's insane, you couldn't vision the pain
Always a snitch in the game, what you want, prison or fame?
Neither one, dunn, long as my digits are sane
He lookin' frigid, dig it, make sure them digits get changed
'Cause I can't be in hell's cell, shout out to Mel Mel
Cash and Hell Rell, Zeek doin three, he even fell, hell
He comin' home an '07 and 12 cells
'Cause you must have known, I can't trust the phones
For the dough you'll be like d'oh, stuck at home

Nowadays, dog, they raid up in the ballparks
Blaze 'em when they cross sharks
We raiders of the lost ark
I'm like a ballplayer, shake up and cross narcs
They get mad when I lay up in the Porsche Box
More props, R.I.P., my poor pops
Can't see his son shine like the Four Tops
My antennas will block the scanners
I got blammas, you'll drop your hammers
Lawyers to watch lawyers, cameras to watch cameras
Niggas to watch bitches, Nana to watch Grandma
In pajamas I snuck out to watch Santa
Now look at Killa, you gon' watch Santana

Cam'ron f. Juelz Santana and Sam 'Chipmunk' Cooke, 'Long Time Coming,' Diplomats Vol. 5 (2003).

Cam'ron f. Jaheim, 'Lord You Know', Lord You Know 12'' (2004).

Cam'ron f. Jaheim, 'Lord You Know' (A Capella). Not many rappers' a capellas hold up; it's a testament to the tightness of Cam's slow flow that this one really does. There are also a couple extra bars in the third verse for the completist.

Bonus: Cam'ron, 'Dynasty Intro Freestyle,' Diplomats Vol. 5 (2003). This unremarkable, even disappointing freestyle is notable for one reason: that it seems to be the source of Kanye's one good punchline. You may remember, back when Rap City was on its last legs and the set had famous lines from great rappers on the wall ("Is there a heaven for a G" was one), that Kanye, in one of his appearances, not-so-jokingly demanded that his "killin y'all niggas on that lyrical shit/mayonnaise colored Benz, I push miracle whips" make the wall. Which was nutty enough, but what if Kanye stole the line? College Dropout dropped in '04, this mixtape dropped in '03, and here's the quote from the freestyle (1:11-1:20):

Step to Cam, damn, on some lyrical shit
Slash spiritual tip, it's hysterical, dick
Just call my car mayonnaise, Miracle Whip

Now maybe Kanye was running around the Roc studios trying to impress everyone with his so-so punchline a year before the album dropped and Cam picked it up, but I seriously doubt it. The way Cam phrases the line, it's put the way he would have put it if he had written it. Kanye clearly took Cam's tossed-off throwaway, polished it up a bit, used it as the coup de grace of the closer on his debut album, and then turned it into a trademark. Google Kanye and miracle whips; it's downright sad how many people cite it as his best line, or even as the moment when they were sold on Kanye as lyricist. Charges of plagiarism in rap don't make much sense and I give Jay a ton of slack on his compulsive Biggie homage, but when you're stealing a line that nobody but the good people of Harlem and Jewish Cam obsessives have heard, and then build your whole reputation as a lyricist around it, that's beyond the pale.

When Cam Could Still Rap, Guest Appearance Edition

I'm sorry I don't have more rarities for you, but scouring the old Diplomats mixtapes is a lot of work. Typing up Cam lyrics, you realize that some of the charges of nonsensicality have a little merit and that some of his lines have no purpose other than to fit into his insane rhyme schemes. Either that or some of his shit is beyond me. Another thing that you notice is Cam's ad-libs, which, rather than serve as emphasis, function as a weird running commentary on what he's saying. Often Cam asks a question of himself in ad-lib, answers it in verse, and then goes "oh," like he's thanking himself for answering. Oddly enough, Styles, who you normally don't think of as being anything like Cam, uses ad-libs in a very similar - if anything even more wry - way. I should write about Styles sometime.

Yo, I leave jail smoothly, jump in the pale hooptie
Fuck the dick-suckin, ass-lickin male groupies
Diplomats, you look at alliance, you shook in defiance
I'm cookin up coke, lookin for clients (pure white!)
I got the AK, SK, 40 Cal
Scope red on your head still 40 thou
Worse than files of Nerf-Turf, burstin blaow
Give the church my child, ask to nurture thou
'Cause I've seen the hearses now,
But if this was Gilligan's Isle, Thirstin Howl, wow
Look at his kicks, they worth a thou
Isn't it sad, you do what I say and wish that you had
You Michigan crabs, you stabbed up, piss in a bag
Worse than that, zipped in a bag
Broke to fractions, a division of math
I'm, Hollywooood, shittin on Shaft, we go hard

DMX f. Cam'ron, 'We Go Hard,' Grand Champ (2003), 1:20-2:04.

All you got to say is "hide me," I ride free
I be, the one to change your birth date, S.S., or ID (I got all that)
No more hanging with the YG's, State Prop
No Roc, private dock, in case you need an IV,
No more Bent', that's Accord money, 420
See, can't afford money, money, he's award money
Whether ninety or the first degree
If it's murder in the first degree (what?), it'll be the third degree (oh!)
And they looking for the perjury (what else?)
If you ain't murk the G, perfectly, he'll be in surgery
Take your seed out the nursery, nurse him at the precinct
Give him dessert, that ain't where he deserve to be (not at all)
And I went through this personally, certainly (faggots!)
3-2 for burglary, [now it? Niles?] was referred to me
So they play us in no way, no way
Blaze up the roadways, A.C. and O.J.
Read the paper, eggs and OJ (OJ!)
Call CD, the head of the O'Jays (that's my African nigga)
That's a gipsy cab, risky all the chips we had
45 flea-flicker, we niggas, hit the gas
When the operation go stale, ain't no jail
I did my whole album on bail (that's the truth!)
I got you, Mac Mittens, send them a black ribbon
Attack with mac spittin', I can't go back prison

Beanie Sigel f. Cam'ron, "Wanted Dead or Alive," The B. Coming (2005), 2:47-4:04.



Doggy, I seldom stunt, but got some pell 'em stunts
Call 'em dunts, tell them hoes, go sell them cunts
Roll hella blunts, and I'm only gonna tell you once (no, no no)
So you should tell a friend, to tell a friend, to tell a bitch
Tel-a-thon, telescope, televised, can tell I'm rich (damn!)
'Cause I sell my bricks (what else?),
call hoes poultry (why?), chickens that smell like fish, bitch (oh)
You rockin' Dada Dot, me I keep a Prada box
Ak', gotta rock the rocks, now I got the rock of rocks (minimum)
And I cop a top, AK, chop a Glock, suede beige knock-a-knocks
System in the drop of drops (damn!), get the mobsters mopped
Get the poppas popped, top a top, Chaka Khan,
Dog, they'll be shottas shot,
I done shot a lot, shot the nine, shot the rock
Sure shot, shot for sure - but I'm secure
No security, Killa keep Glocks and fours,
Plus blocks of raw, probably popped your whore
But I'm not for sure, bitch wanna, hop aboard
Hit up the docks and shores

Jae Millz f. Cam'ron and T.I., 'No No No (Remix)' (2003), 0:00-0:59. (Sorry the intro is missing, a non-clean version of this thing is notoriously difficult to find.)