As a rapper, Cam’Ron is great at many things. He’s a detailed reporter, his verses filled with weights, dates, calibers, places, even a name or two. He’s a searing wit, regarding everything from the mundanities of the corner to the politics of romantic relationships; even his vulgarity is hilarious. He’s one of the greatest technicians in the history of the genre, capable of staggering feats of rhyme, both compressed into tiny spaces and drawn out over whole verses.
But the recent events with his mother underscore one of Cam’Ron’s least appreciated traits: his humanity. Over the years, in between the blow-job odes and the kiln-fired rhymes about the drug game, he’s rapped compellingly about his parents (“Harlem Streets,” “More Reasons”), and his own sometimes-failing health (detailing chronic stomach pain on “I.B.S.”). Cam’s cocksureness has long been mesmerizing, but sometimes his melancholy is more so.
Either way, Cam’Ron is more complex than his persona. “He’s got a playful spirit. He’s a dude that always want to have fun,” says Calvin “40. Cal” Byrd, a Dipset member who grew up in the same building—at 140th Street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem—as Cam’Ron. “He be one of those dudes who’s like, ‘You wanna go to Disney World real quick?’”
A high-school basketball standout, Cam’Ron was kicked out of Navarro College in Corsicana, Texas—despite maintaining a 3.5 GPA, he says—after he was caught on campus with a gun. He returned to Harlem just as his childhood friend Mase was becoming an integral part of the mid-’90s Bad Boy empire. Soon, Cam’Ron had a deal with Epic Records through Untertainment (run by Lance “Un” Rivera, Lil’ Kim’s former manager), a couple of hits, and then a burning need to be released from his contract. Childhood friend Damon Dash—who had lived in the same building as Cam’Ron’s grandmother—helped negotiate his release and brought him to the then-still-ascendant Roc-A-Fella Records.
“Soon as I got to Roc-A-Fella, I started thinking, I gotta put the team together,” Cam’Ron says. “The stronger people around you [are], the stronger you look.”
Eventually, the core Diplomats would be Cam’Ron, Jim Jones, Freekey Zekey, and Juelz Santana: “Money or not, me and Jim always had a bunch of girls around. Juelz started coming in, girls like, ‘He cute.’ I pick up on all that. Both of them had great images, and once the rap part was there, we did it.”
When they began releasing mixtapes in 2001, Cam was already playing with the idea of myth. “The F.E.D.S. magazine came out with Alpo, Rich Porter, and everybody on it, and everybody in the ’hood was going crazy,” Cam recalls with a laugh. “These guys had furs on, they had jewelry, and they were flashing money. I’m looking at it like, I got 10 furs in my closet, I got mad jewelry. I’m bugging. This is what people want? Let’s do it. If you look at Diplomats Volume 1, I just jacked the F.E.D.S. thing.”
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