Cam’Ron is deftly polarizing: middle ground melts away with the mention of his name. As with most men who wear pastels, Cam is easy to love and just as easy to hate. While his 2002 Roc-A-Fella debut, Come Home With Me, and subsequent Diplomats double-disc have produced a cultlike following of Dipset devotees, his crass subject matter and simplistic flow have consistently frustrated critics who value rap complexity over lyrical slick talk. So with his fourth solo album, Purple Haze, Cam continues to draw his pink and purple line in the sand.
Aside from his unwillingness to explore uncharted thematic territory–money, drugs, and freaky tales dominate the Purple world– Cam’Ron’s glossy rap is often buried by the production. For example, Syleena Johnson powers Kanye West’s electrifying and emotional track “Down & Out.” The inspiring backdrop only highlights Cam’s superficial outlook. Similarly, on “Harlem Streets,” lines like, “Cam got the recipe now / Got three girls / I got to be Destiny’s Child,” can’t compete with Ty-Tracks’s sentimental flip of the theme song from Hill Street Blues. And the electro pop single “Girls,” which would have been more at home as a B-side during Cam’s “Horse & Carriage” days, is an unfortunate interpretation of Cyndi Lauper’s ’80s anthem “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”
But his cocksure attitude wins in the end. On “More Gangsta Music,” he trades verses with Juelz Santana over a head-banging Heatmakerz bounce that stomps the energy out of the rowdy original, “Dipset Anthem.” The N.W.A-sampled “Dope Man” chases Cam and Jim Jones as they spit their criminology over aggravated snares and screeching synths. Cam’s nonsensical wordplay complements the ridiculously dramatic crooning of his name on “Killa Cam”; “You one happy scrappy,” he raps, “I got Pataki at me / Bitches say I’m tacky, daddy / Range look like Laffy Taffy.”
It’s the arrogance of it all, the superinflated confidence, the unwavering belief in self that inspires the most excessive display of purple passion this side of Prince. And while you wade through the Purple Haze to find meaning in the simple things, Cam will continue to add color to his coarse style of rap until you clearly see things his way.
