Spend enough time around Cam’Ron and eventually, the conversation turns to money. Cam’Ron is a fan. “I don’t hear him talking about sales that much,” says Minya “Miss Info” Oh, the Hot 97 [WQHT-FM] radio personality. “I definitely hear him talking about money. It’s a Harlem thing, that hustler mentality. He’s not trying to get on some type of hall-of-fame wall. It’s all about how much have you amassed.”
Says Joie Manda, executive vice president and general manager of Asylum Records, Cam’s label, “He’s not chasing a million sold. He’s chasing $10 million profit.”
To hear Juelz Santana and Jim Jones tell it, money is also one of the main things that have rendered the Diplomats’ business relationships and friendships almost completely untenable. Cam’s involvement with Juelz’s contract at Def Jam Recordings has been a constant source of gossip (he allegedly sold it to the label for $2 million), and the shared ownership of Diplomats Records and Byrd Gang Records keeps Cam’Ron and Jim entangled, even though they recently went more than a year without speaking. Their frictions had become so calcified that their lawyers began conversations about legally dissolving those relationships. “We was doing that,” Cam says, “but I don’t want to talk about that part of it right now.” (As VIBE went to press, there were reports that the two spoke, though no progress had been made toward a group reconciliation. Jones later denied talking to Cam.)
When speaking of his fellow Diplomats—and he insists everyone is still a Diplomat, himself included—Cam takes pains to put off an air of unaffectedness: “If I’m part owner of the company, how I’m not gonna be a Diplomat?” Juelz’s syrup problem, alleged by Cam earlier this year, left him concerned, he swears. Jim deserves his current fame, he insists.
VIBE: When you hear Jim’s songs on the radio right now, do you like them?
Cam’Ron: I love them!
You think Jim’s a good rapper?
Yeah, Jim’s a great rapper.
And Juelz?
Juelz a great rapper, too.
You won’t switch the station?
Not at all.
You’re in the club going “Na na nana na na”?
[Pauses, grins] “Pop Champagne.”
“They’re family,” says Manda. “Just because they’re not making music together doesn’t mean they’re not family.” Says 40. Cal, “Fans are real disappointed. What team you supposed to root for?”
Turns out that amid all this confusion, Cam’Ron has an advantage, a built-in fanbase: the Internet. During his time away, several hip hop blogs took their names from Cam’Ron lyrics, his tricky internal rhymes a favorite of nerds and thugs alike. That style persists on Crime Pays, which reprises the combination of brash street talk and dazzling, absurdist wordplay that has made Cam’Ron a cult figure, if not quite a superstar. Accordingly, the setup for Crime Pays has included an extremely aggressive online campaign, including videos shot on Cam’Ron’s own HD camera, carefully managed leaks of music, and even a comedy sketch with nu-vaudevillians The Real.
“Cam’Ron has a sense of humor that really translates to the Internet,” says the hip hop comedy duo’s Jeff Rosenthal. “Brilliant one-liners you can quote in a Twitter post.”
Whether that will be enough in a declining record business is an open question. But while Cam’Ron insists the terms of his contract with Asylum have no equal—he receives 80 percent of album profits after the label’s costs are recouped—he is also diversified, earning, he says, about one-third of his money from nonmusic ventures. There are the businesses in Harlem and the Bronx, though he won’t specify. “When you got businesses people know about,” he explains, “they tend to not want to go support your business. It’s like that in the ’hood.” And then there are the nebulous affairs in Ohio—several cities (Dayton, Youngstown, Cleveland, Cincinnati) were name-checked on Cam’s 2004 masterpiece Purple Haze (Diplomat/Roc-A-Fella), and Crime Pays features the eyebrow-arching title “I Used to Get It in Ohio”—and other spots in the Midwest. “There’s always the aura of, Is this guy still in the streets?” Miss Info says. “And he’s not gonna shy away from that.”
Recently, Cam’Ron was considering putting his Lodi home on the market—his primary residence is a five-mile skip away in Fort Lee, N.J.—and invited real estate agents to tour the place. Here again, Cam’Ron stumbled onto a new hustle: One of them was impressed enough with his taste to want to do business. “He called me and wanted me to look at three places where they wanted to pay me to interior decorate,” Cam says, incredulous. “That shit bugged me out. So I did one job for about $50K. I had a $100K budget and it turned out great, so [now] they always call me to do stuff like that. But I’m like, That’s some shit I’ll do when I retire, son.”
Not that that’s on the horizon. “I’ll be sitting in my house rapping, like, to myself. This shit is just embedded in my brain,” he says. “What the hell I’mma stop rapping for if I can’t stop rapping, literally?”
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