Last night.
I rapped some of his lyrics because I like the way they make my lips smack together. “Y’all fakin the fizzle. I’m cakin for shizzle. Fuck a sizzler steak. My steak stay sizzled.” I didn’t rap the parts about bitches or brain. I rapped those parts ’cause they were sharp. But smarts aren’t the sole reason to like somebody. They’re not even the best reason.
I’ve got to stop doing that.
We were seeing Cam’ron yet again, this time in Harlem, at the filming of a Pay-Per-View Dipset concert. Please, everyone, remind me never to attend a concert filming for the rest of my life. If New York rap shows operate on DJ Screw time, televised New York rap shows are like sludging through a Robitussin comedown: you must wait indefinitely for normalcy to commence, and in the interim, you are mildly uncomfortable, and not convinced you aren’t crazy.
Cam’ron. Promoting Purple Haze, in Cross Colours style (but not philosophy): the letters “69” knitted across the front of his sweater in red and, along the sleeves in yellow, “RAW LOVE.” (Say, didn’t you have some songs about what ills “raw love” begets, Cam?). Hat cocked sideways. Calm. Good breath control. I sat with Sasha in the first row of the lower mezz. From up above, Cam looked short, but the TV lights burned bright light over everything, so we could make eye contact.
The first or second single from Purple Haze, “Shake,” is a date song straight from the Dashboard Confessional lawbook of misogynistic courting rituals. Code 47-1: if the lady-object says she doesn’t want to get with you, she’s either lying or a tease. Witness: “Ma, you straight frontin. Let’s get the date jumpin. See ya booty panties. Ma, shake som’n.” The beat is spare and aggressive, woven through with a scary synth section that implies the backing soundtrack for Doom II: on a dangerous hunt and stalking through crosshairs. For the performance, Cam and Juelz Santana paraded out their entry in the hot new “performing babies as rap accessory” movement: onstage, a boy who couldn’t have been older than six, somebody’s kid and adorable, his neck bedazzled in diamond Dipset charms, sang the chorus to “Shake.” “Move your hips and lick your lips,” he sang, moon-faced, in a soprano six years off from puberty. (There might be a lyric in there about cutting, but I can’t decipher the chorus’ sample; it’s pitch-shifted and chipmunky, but not in the pleasurable way like Terror Squad’s “Take Me Home.”) At the song’s end, the little boy said to Cam, “Where’s my money?” Cam responded, “You want to get paid now?” and handed him three stacks of fake hundreds before he trotted offstage.
Cam’ron plays a mighty lyrical hopscotch but topically, he reinforces the same old oppressive values–which is nothing new, either to himself or concrete-cold rap. Distilled, his raps are about badassiness, bitches he is fucking, bitches who will fuck him despite his admitted sexism, his lack of real self-respect (based on his reaction to women who—against all odds—respect him: “Bitches say I’m the man, I tell ’em ‘nevermind.'”) and, last but not least, his refined taste in designer clothing. His drug of choice? Cocaine. The bourgie drug. Sell it; don’t smoke it. It sounds like a glossy Al Pacino character, maybe, but Cam’ron’s “movie real”: he’s an ex-high school basketball star turned ex-drug dealer and, as a 28-year-old in NYC (or Jersey, whatevs), he IS a zeitgeist. He represents the consciousless hedonism that lots of dudes my age want to indulge; I think they see it as a kind of freedom.
(If I am feeling fair, I will say it’s maybe freedom from having to forge out a whole, developed, plural self, when all signs to masculinity read “one option.” It’s telling that when men attempt to drop the hypermasculine, ubertuff shell and cry en masse, it becomes a genre unto itself: E-M-O. That said, can we also introduce the concept of “owning one’s actions”?)
Whether a product, a trap, or the eye of a hurricane: Cam’ron’s lyrics and persona validate male irresponsibility. And that’s easy to pick apart in the abstract, get high-minded and theoretical about it, like we were talking Jackson Pollock or Godard or Baudelaire—what’s yr take on Cassavetes?—or some equally talented but repellant shareholder in the he-man/woman haters club. I wish on the grave of Simone de Beauvoir that it were all theories and abstractions. But this, this right here is the really real. When that male irresponsibility translates into action that affects YOU, PERSONALLY, you maybe won’t want to rap along, so much. And I say unto you: violent, invasive, irresponsible and ugly behavior has cut great holes into my life and the lives of the people I love, from birth to adulthood, and it will probably continue to do so until my body is cold in the ground. We have lived through abuse, sexual assault, and abandonment, and we have toiled with broken spirits because of it. I don’t want to build up a tolerance to those things. They are unacceptable.
(For those beefing over the fact that I am not dropping grafs on Fallujah, let me get Alastair Cooke Connections on you all and point out that GEORGE W. BUSH, the figurehead of roughly one-half of America’s beliefs and values, is the QUINTESSENCE OF NIHILISTIC MALE IRRESPONSIBILITY. And Cam’ron IS coming from the same macro-culture—the selfsame bourgeois patriarchy that sanctions aggressive war in the name of capital. GW tricked half the country into believing this war state is a normal, acceptable MO, partly just by acting like it was.)
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you are the first person to mention the tie in with pure unadulterated ignorance and a bush in office (c) George the first & NWA.
i think i’ll give you a raise.
>he’s an ex-high school basketball star turned “ex”-drug dealer (my quotations–obviously)
This part above made me chuckle (though not in a good way).
I could tell of miserable Harlem blocks that better hope to GODDESS Purple Haze The Album sells like GOP values and the substance to which it owes its namesake.
But yeah, you’re correct to point out the reckless irresponsibility that the Dips’ oeurve is rife with.
Don’t get me wrong, I can, as awkward as it sounds, “throw my hands in the air” to “the crunk in the club” (::snicker::), but ultimately, the music of the day (Cam’s included) seems sneaky DL-evil and injected with FDA-approved government lies and various other bad hormones that make the young boyz and girlz look and act older than they really are. And try using Hot 97 for any purpose other than “alarm,” and you totally feel me when I say it’s greasy and bad for digestion like G-Dubz’ smirky vow to spend “political capital” earned, and the Patriot Act.
Fuck the hipsters. Motherfuckers who really got the Dips on blast (and are in the unfortunate first row position to be most influnced by their muzik) eat unwholsome bodgea snacks all day and don’t live long. Killa would sell their mothers piff, so, naturally, he wouldn’t blink at this.
In short:
1. Your entry was/is thought-provoking.
2. Rap misogyny is back like cooked crack.
3. This world/country is going to shit in an Oval Office
toilet.
4. “4 more years” will be good for mindnumbingly unfuckwithable, abrasive, if not utterly souless, hip-hop.
5. The jawn with Kanye and the vocal sample (that narrows it down!) is my shit.
6. Peace.
Those weren’t fake stacks, ma. My boy is gets paid.
i’m really on the peace vibe now so i want to say that when the peaceful people use very harsh language its very hard to remain peaceful. i think i agree with almost everything you say will but the tone just gets me defensive.
i’m not sure but i think its even more imperative for those of us who are accoustumed to living in a world that comes at us very hard should talk peacefully to each other when possible
i’m not trying to down you brother. jesus walked a peaceful walk and we all need our brothers and sisters, particularly for those of us who have lived harsh lives, to talk with peace.
ameen
How many years have we (collective “we” obviously, I’m only 21) had this conversation, and how much has changed? Isnt this the same shit people have been saying for years? Is it an answer to just confront it whenever we can, sit and watch the press lament the conservative hypermasculine crimes of entertainers who have struck this chord with so many people? I’m honestly asking bcuz I can’t think of any answers and it seems to me part of the problem is that a lot of things come in to play when we put the rappers on blast – suddenly a bunch of other people join the chorus, people we don’t like who big up the anti-misogynist agenda with the overlap of a racist one.
Basically…is this post part of the solution, or is the end result of this post that in allmusic guide’s blurb on Cam’ron ten years from now he’ll be referred to as a “controversial rapper”?
I don’t want to make it seem like I’m defending him OR telling you to shut up, I just want to know what to do about it.
the stack of money he handed the kid was real and he kept some or all of it
david i think thats an answer intself, in that we in the collective sense have been asking these questions for so long, and the analysis has already been done as to decifering the levels you’re talking about.
i think its always going to be easy to shovel things onto those who are oppressed, and there’s multiple oppressions to speak about.
like you i wonder if its going to ever get better but if you think about it Frederick Douglass was writing his stuff and probably thought he had it figured out. and he did, but that has not stopped things from occurring.
i think the only thing that can lessen it is a culture with less violence in it in general. we have a totem pole mentality here. but keep its the same in so many countries. in some countries its done by if you’re Han chinese versus not, i’ve heard
anyway i don’t think really things will change on an individual level, and if we live in a society similiar to this in 10 years, then Cam will be a “controversial rapper” and it won’t even be because of this post
peace
you are so smart, j shep.
Dipset is a movement n looks like they aint goin nowhere so regardless of what you or anyone else thinks its fallin on deaf ears. im stuck in the dipset movement n i feign for new dip shit like a crack addict feignin for my next blast. jay said only dudes movin units em pimp juice n us well now its only dudes movin units dips byrdgang purple city chea . all you hear about when it comes to hip hop this n hip hop that is dipset or crews affiliated with teh dips. Everybody might as well settle down pour u a glass of sizzurp tie ur diplomats bandana tight n wait 4 the next mixtape to come out [which im starting to believe is 2 every day] cause the dips is a movement not a group not a crew not a couple rap artists. Look how fast the dips have taken over n locked shit down. Im a 21 yr old WHITE female from baltimore city n let me tell you from experience the dips spread in the hood so quick you woulda thought people was standin on the corner with free purple tops along with $5 dip mixtapes. The boys are nice! not one of the dips falls short of anything except being commercial like the rest of these wack ass artists. so strap up n move out dipset movement will sweep u up b4 u realize it !
n im sure the stacks was legit.
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