Cam'Ron and Ghostface new albums

dreadglocks said:

does anyone know what the production rosters were for either Cam's Killa Season or Ghost's Fishscales. the beats on both new records sound better than anything they've used before, IMO.
thanks

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Well, I know MF Doom, Pete Rock, Madlib and J. Dilla has produced several of the tracks on Fishscale. Don't know about Cam's tho'.

has 'killa season' leaked already? wow. not heard it (apart from two tracks) but im guessing the heatmakerz are producing some of it.

i wasn't aware that it was leaked either. there is a bogus 'advance' copy going around the internet that's a bunch of b sides slapped together.

the retail of fishscale has now been leaked


-edit- i read the above post as "i wasnt aware either had leaked"

Cam's got a lot of producer you've never heard of and not that much heatmakers on it. I read an interview with him in XXL where he says that he prefers working with up and coming producers because the beats are cheaper and most of the time when you buy a beat you're just buying a brand name.

SIZZLE said:

Cam's got a lot of producer you've never heard of and not that much heatmakers on it. I read an interview with him in XXL where he says that he prefers working with up and coming producers because the beats are cheaper and most of the time when you buy a beat you're just buying a brand name.

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That means he prefers working with people he doesn't have to actually pay for beats.

its refreshing in a way that he doesnt want to work with the usual name brand bores but as much as i like dipset, i swear 90% of their beats sound the same!

i like a lot of the beats cam uses, but the thing that gets to me about a lot of the dipset stuff is the relentless bleakness of their rhymes, especially that juelz santana album. at the risk of pissing on a few of my arguments about this stuff, there's a fine line between reflecting street reality and endorsing a lot of really grotty stuff: mindless materialism, gross sexism and completely irresposible portrayal of crack dealing as a great way to get ahead in life. hell, on the juelz album shottas with sizzla even has a good bit iof battyboy bashing thrown in. it's like anything unpleasant is sucked up and incorporated into it at the first available opportunity. back to the glorification of the hustler archetype, countless people have been doing it for ages but for some reason i find it most distateful here. at least all jeezy's (and he's a much worse offender in many ways) traphouse bluster is tolerable because its taken to such cartoon-like extremes. maybe i'm just being unusually sensitive the moment, though. in which case, i'm sure it will pass. anyway, re ghostface, there's a great sfj review of it in the latest issue of the new yorker and i'm pretty much in love with barbershop.

i could handle a lot of the nihilism if i felt that juelz or jeezy were even making some effort as rappers but i think theyre two of the laziest, most unimaginative bores in hip hop right now. although they pick some catchy beats and have a few good hooks (like jeezy's song with mannie fresh or juelz' clockwork), they offer no new twists on life in 'the trap', its just a bloated, predictable, pathetic re-run of every painful street-rap cliche you can think of being trotted out for the umpteenth time, and not very interestingly either. jeezy is actually like a regrettable walking case study for the modern rapper. i dont really find him all that cartoonish in truth (theres no OTT humour or larger than life quality with his stuff, its all mind-numbingly mundane and matter of fact with its 'i dont have to make effort cos im just so REAL') and i dont see why anyone should make apologies for being sensitive about either juelz or jeezy, theyre both quite deplorable.

hmm, can't help but agree in some ways but as ever i think that's a bit strong. jeezy is actually *funny*. i can't take him at all seriously, even though i know that's not what he intends. anyway, here he is with rapid ric when i ran into him in texas...

stelfox said:

hmm, can't help but agree in some ways but as ever i think that's a bit strong. jeezy is actually *funny*. i can't take him at all seriously, even though i know that's not what he intends. anyway, here he is with rapid ric when i ran into him in texas...

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why is that a bit strong? these guys are mainstream pop stars gleefully promoting drug dealing. i find something a bit distasteful about that.

forgetting the morals though, from an artistic point of view, i can think of a million other hip hop songs/rappers where the issues surrounding drugs are dealt with far more interestingly. jeezy and juelz are just giving people a cheap, depthless, big dumb, glorifying thrill of 'life in the trap'. they dont tell me anything new about that life or what lies under it. its nothing but gangsta glam. id take the clipse over either of them any day - at least they talk about coke with some panache. but at this stage, its like, how many more rappers do we need talking about pushing weight, blah blah blah? i heard some new busta rhymes tracks, even HEs talking about how he used to sell coke! its ridiculous.

Logan: exactly, you don't think Cam got that tangle of chains around his neck by paying producers? In a way I think it's cool because whatever his reasons it means more people are getting their foot in the door. We definitely wouldn't have heard of heatmakerz if it wasn't for the dips buying beats for cheap from them as unknowns. And as much as I like them I'm actually glad to hear Cams putting some new people on as HM are not that versatile and they've been working that sound for a while now.

re: nihilism, I actually find that's one of the appeals of their style. To me they are pretty cartoonish as well, a lot of hyperbole there, like cam saying he's bought a spaceship: "Got a warrant?/I'm in orbit, come after Cam". That cracks me up every time. But I do agree, most of the shit they are glorifying from a moral/political standpoint is abhorrent. They are totally unabashed (which is part of the appeal) but it also means that there is ZERO nuance or recognition of the fact that it's complicated and fucked up to sell crack to your own people in your own neighborhood, even if it does mean you can wear a pink fur coat. I still enjoy their music though I gotta say, they are really some of the only NYC rappers I feel are actually doing anything new worth listening to...

well, that's the bit i'm agreeing with. i just don't think that they're technically lazy or bad rappers, per se. they're limited and the subject matter sucks, not completely talentless.

stelfox said:

well, that's the bit i'm agreeing with. i just don't think that they're technically lazy or bad rappers, per se. they're limited and the subject matter sucks, not completely talentless.

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lol, so where is their talent then? what makes juelz much better than say, young gunz? the only guy whos memorable in the dips is cam'ron. he has the best lines, all the rest in the crew are just riding his coat tails. juelz has a certain hunger which i like, but i can barely remember anything he's said. jeezy seems to have zero to no grasp of (conventional?) flow, hes sort of like the south's answer to mike skinner. he sounds bored, like he cant be bothered to rap. which of course, is his whole shtick, that whole 'i hate rappers, im not a rapper, i dont care about music', but then theres something that rings quite true about that with him. its in all his interviews after all - rapping is just his new hustle, its the backstory thats the star with jeezy, not his music.

dude, why do you even listen to hip-hop? it doesn't seem to make you very happy.

theres no need for such protectiveness

i still like hip hop (although a lot of it doesnt do much for me anymore), but i dont see why i have to love every bit of it unconditionally like some sort of drone with 'either youre with us or against us' stenciled on my forehead.

did i say that? i think i was the one who brought up several pretty big problems with this stuff, funnily enough. i just never see you saying anything very positive about it and there's a real dismissive bitterness about the way you talk about it. is it because you want it to be better and feel let down by it or what? i'm just trying to make sense of why you'd spend so much time (and it's obvious that you do because you know a lot) on something you really don't seem to be getting much out of.

*deep breath*

well, adolescent as it might sound, yeah, i do feel somewhat let down by hip hop. not everything 'back in the days' was brilliant of course, and it did have its own problems, but i do feel like hip hop has kinda dropped the ball. maybe its just something that comes from listening to something so much, that after a while, it all seems samey and you get jaded, but hip hop just seems so complacent, so willing to reinforce the status quo/toe the corporate line in so many ways, its like people arent even 'trying' to up the stakes anymore. or at least, because its pop music now, hardly anyone is unwilling to venture too far outside its one dimensional comfort zone in case it ruins their chance to get paid like 50 (i mean, half the new rappers out proudly say they dont CARE about the music, theyre only in it to make money and i cant help thinking that in spite of this being an extension of the usual rap bravado where youre too cool to give a shit about anything, the attitude has had a large trickle down effect onto scores of other MCs who think that actually, no, you DONT have to care about rapping and you can still make it). im not one of these 'golden age' fetishists that only likes hip hop when it subscribes to soul/funk samples and knackered breakbeats or whatever, i love a lot of the new production (even though much of it is devoid of hardness), i like the fact hip hop hasnt (sonically at least) stopped changing, but there hasnt been any great new rappers to come from the genre in quite a while. no one is really saying anything of note, or saying something vacuous/something thats already been said in any fresh, vital new way. jeezy can barely rap to my ears but hes one of the biggest names in the US, which is bizarre to me. the low expectations and standards for hip hop are dismal IMHO. maybe this all sounds bitter and jaded and while i still enjoy things from mike jones (strangely i especially love it when he repeats the same old lines over and over like hes unaware hes ever said them before), slim thug (diamonds was brilliant), lil jon, ying yang twins, even D4L and dem franchise boyz or whoever, maybe modern hip hop as a whole just isnt for me. but people who say stuff like 'hip hop hasnt changed' or 'if you dont like it now, you probably never did' are talking shit.