In 2004, unrepentant, pre-television heavyweight champion Jack Johnson came back into the public conversation. So it seems appropriate that unapologetic, no-regrets Rocafella artist Cam’ron is poised to snatch the hip-hop crown in 2005 with his fourth release Purple Haze.
Like Johnson, Cam’ron is defiant, flashy, frightening, political yet apolitical and he aims to define what being the king means on his own terms.
Cam’ron and his Diplomats have become the leader of a small contingent of grimy Rotten Apple and Philly rappers on Jay Z’s label who have been embraced as the voice of the streets by the streets and maintain most of their CD sales on the East Coast.
Anti-heroes of pop become ascendant in a historical context. To best understand Cam’ron’s context and why he has been embraced — crews and cliques in the Bronx yelling the call ‘dipset’ that Cam has made his own — one needs to understand the Clinton-era from the vantage point of disenfranchised urban ‘hoods against those enfranchised black and Latino communities.
During the ’90s President Clinton extended, expanded and strengthened the Urban Empowerment Zones started by President Bush’s father. Empowerment Zones (EZs) were designed to bring business development into depressed urban communities. They included American Street in Philadelphia, Downtown Newark, New Jersey and 125th Street in Cam’ron’s home cityhood of Harlem.
While EZs brought unprecedented numbers of Blacks and Latinos into the economic mainstream, further out communities with little access to the Black and Latino political class remained marginalized. These were the communities that fed the ballooning jail system. Stories of gangstas plying trade in these environs make NWA seem as soulful as The Stylistics or The Chi-Lites.
But that’s the point; these are the words that come out before the last flicker of a soul gets snuffed. Rocafella brings this anti-sermon through State Property from Philadelphia and Harlem’s Diplomats, headed by Cam’ron.
Cam’s labelmates from Philly, Freeway and Pedi Crack, are the most underrated voices in hip-hop. Their songs speak not just with rhyme but with vicious sonic landscapes that sound exactly like nihilistic lives on dark North Philly blocks where heroin is the main export.
The Diplomats, including Cam’ron, Juelz Santana and Jim Jones, have adopted a sound closer to JayZ’s club hits, but meld pop jams with images from a Harlem far above bright and shiny 125th Street. In the area of pop appeal, Cam’ron, without Freeway’s almost Amish looking ‘Philly beard,’ is far more appealing to the opposite sex, an important component of street to pop-chart crossover.
I taught for an alternative program within Kensington High School in North Philly. I had about 10 heroin dealers in my classes. Cam’ron’s rhymes and style often remind me of their back-of-class styled conversations about their Satanic trade. Topical, yes, but it doesn’t always make for captivating lyrics.
While this may become boring for outside-looking-in listeners, contextualization in mind, this style is what solders Cam to kids hailing from the corner of Nowhere and Nobody.
“Purple Haze” is Cam’s brash grab for mainstream recognition and with the exception of the critically maligned track Harlem Streets, which only core fans will devour, he diverges from his trademark conversational flow where end-phrase rhythm involves repeated words instead of rhymes. Regardless of what the music media thinks, Purple Haze will be catapulted into the clubs and out into the cars of Midwest hip-hop listeners.
In this final bid, Cam has also toned down some of his pop-up-XXX porno window braggadocio.
Haze is not a critical classic; hip-hop academics need not come to the floor. This disc is just infectious, enjoyable and more importantly, it will bring the 1999 to present East Coast sound to the forefront.
It is interesting to note, in the silt stream of current event ephemera, that the ascent of Cam and Freeway’s voice parallels a discussion about current Depression Era unemployment rates among Black men coming to the national forefront. But enough about the context, cats want to feel music.
More than his previous releases or copious mix-tape collaborations, filled with hard, contrasting beats, Purple Haze’s style consistently falls into Rocafella’s distinct sway back n’ forth pop style. Under considerable influence of Kanye West, tracks like ‘Down and Out’ and ‘Dipset Forever’ are filled with beats for booming trunk speakers overlaid by dusties (classic soul records) last heard at a parent’s anniversary party.
By this time, everyone has heard Cam’s aspire-to-be-another-Big-Pimpin’ track Girls, with the almost ’80s Freestyle reworking of Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’ as the chorus. It’s a bag of tricks but good pop is often about seeing how many times a convention can be reconfigured and still thrill.
Like most hip-hop from artists growing with Billboard aspirations, Haze has its share of flaccid tracks. But then again, who is to say what won’t infect the public bloodstream? What makes hip-hop full releases interesting a year later are the seemingly ignorable tracks that triumph to define a moment, without push of the industry machine.
So should anyone buy this? Yes, but buy it with bookends, to understand Cam’ron, as the streets say, how people are feelin’ him. Find Cam’ron’s mixtape releases, buy Mobb Deep’s ‘Amerika’s Nightmare’ and Freeway’s ‘Philadelphia Freeway,’ then listen to all with a critical ear. After that, throw all critical nonsense in the dumpster and start listening to Cam’ron wit’ yo ass in motion.
