ameron “Cam’ron” Giles had it all in 1998: a hit single featuring Mase and another single featuring the emerging star of the moment, DMX. Somehow, it just didn’t happen like it should have. Cam’s first LP, Confessions of Fire, sold moderately well, but, considering the buzz caused by the two singles, it was a disappointment. After that, Killa Cam moved on to release S.D.E, a sadly inconsistent and misguided effort that again featured two good singles and poor sales. Soon after its release, Cam’s label, Untertainment, notorious for promoting its artists poorly, was sold and many of the artists were dropped. Cam unfortunately survived the purge and prepared his next album, originally titled Blow. The advance of Blow accentuated everything that was wrong with Cam’ron’s previous two efforts. Gimmicky samples like “The Facts of Life” were present solely for novelty value, and Cam was much too lazy in his flow and lyrics. The production, predictably, was even worse than his previous efforts. Then everything changed. For a reported seven million Cam was signed to Roc-A-Fella Records. Utilizing Roc-A-Fella’s Roc The World production team and Jay-Z’s business savvy, the LP would probably be a commercial success. Would Cam’s re-titled Come Home With Me achieve more than that, or would the album be a faux-Blueprint?


The production on Come Home With Me was handled almost completely by Roc The World, also known as Kanye West and Just Blaze, the team that also handled much of the production on The Blueprint. For that reason, Come Home With Me is similar in spirit and flavor in many places. Thankfully, the producers are talented and innovative enough to give the album its distinctive flair at the same time. While Just Blaze produced the best beat on The Blueprint, “Girls Girls Girls”, Kanye West has the best beat here with “Dead or Alive”. The vocal sample on the track doesn’t add much, but the rock flavored song is a pleasant surprise and would work wonderfully, except for the fact that Cam'ron is rapping over it. He has trouble on this song, and a few others, in matching the beat properly, which definitely takes away from the stellar production on the songs. Sometimes on the CD Cam'ron simply sounds disinterested, and, while that works on certain tracks like “Welcome to New York” and “Live My Life”, many of the other songs suffer from Cam’s flow. It is especially noticeable on “Daydreaming” and “I Just Wanna”, which are two of the more generic songs, production wise, on the album. Instead of lifting up the load of a generic backing track, Cam’ron’s lazy flow doesn’t add anything which makes the songs easy to skip. Cam’ron has the ability to flow fast or slow very easily and over many different kinds of beats, but he doesn’t use that ability to its fullest on Come Home With Me and it makes the album closer to mediocre than anything else.


The real draw of the album is the production. Just Blaze really steps it up on the album. The best song on the album, “The Roc”, featuring Beanie Sigel and Memphis Bleek is helped by a very memorable main track that is repeated just enough to keep it catchy, and leave listeners wanting more. The riff could very easily get annoying, but Blaze alternates it just enough with a much more simple bridge between the two that shouldn’t work, but is pulled off nicely. None of the MCs are especially lyrically proficient, but they are all at the top of their game on “The Roc”. The track is helped immensely by the absence of a chorus, making the song feel more musical and less like album filler. Just Blaze also contributes “Oh Boy” and “Welcome to New York”, easily the two most gimmick laden tracks on the album. “Oh Boy”, the first single, sounds great on the first listen but quickly becomes annoying and eventually grating. The bell sounds in the background plus the lack of a bass line make the beat passive and small, and the tinny vocal sample that is repeated much too often, is an obvious attempt at a song for the clubs. “Oh Boy” is actually the first song from Roc The World, in which their trademark vocal samples detract from the proceedings. However, while the song is helped by the lack of the chorus, Cam and his protégé Juelz Santana’s lyrics seem amateur and freestyled, as if the only thing that’s important in the song is to have the word boy somewhere in each sentence. Even more formulated to sell records is “Welcome to New York”. Not only does the song feature rap’s current It Boy, Jay-Z, Just Blaze’s beat is very reminiscent of the Rocky theme song in a bad way. The chorus predictably mentions the World Trade Center towers and 9/11. It should not come as a surprise that “Welcome to New York City” is going to be the second single. Especially curious is when Cam shouts “Just Blaze, you own me!” at the beginning of the track. For the most part it's true, so when Blaze misses, like on “That’s Hey Ma”, Cam'ron fails with him.


Cam’s lyrics do deserve to be mentioned, and, predictably, they are hit and miss throughout the record. One part of Cam’ron wants to be a punch line artist, which he does decently on “Dead or Alive” with “Kamikazes wit' they homies, body your daughter / Turn your whole crew into Dodgers like Tommy Lasorda”. Another part of Cam’ron wants to brag about his life as a dealer on the streets, shown on songs like “Losing Weight Part 2”. Even still, he definitely spends much of his time talking about the ladies and to the ladies, on almost every song. Cam’ron, circa 1992, was a borderline horrorcore rapper in a group with Mase and the late great Big L called Children of the Korn. It was a group witty with the potential to be as controversial as Eminem. He wasn’t fantastic, but he had his niche. From Confessions of Fire on, Cam has lost his identity. We don’t really know anything about Cameron Giles, even three albums deep: we only know about Killa Cam, the ladies man who will kill you. An introspective track or two would definitely have been welcomed on this LP. Even something like “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)”, where the subject matter isn’t even that obvious would have worked well. The other main problem with Cam’s lyrics lie in his laziness. His flow is lazy, and so it comes as no surprise that his lyrics are lacksadaisical as well. Cam relies way too much on rhyming things with themselves, only changing one word, like on “Losing Weight Part 2“ where he rhymes “18 months please, that ain't facing time / I'm stressed anyway, need it for vacation time / I'ma do the right thing though, take shock anyway / 6 months right back on the damn block anyway”. Rhymes like that kill any momentum Cam’ron had built up from the previous lines and often stop songs dead in their tracks. This also helps to ruin the album’s replay value, which is average at best. The tracks don’t have a ton of depth, and subtle lyrics would have gone a long way to improving this fault.


Come Home With Me is a pretty good LP that deserves the commercial success it will garner, because that’s what it’s unabashedly going for. Ultimately, Cam’ron is a likeable man, looking like the guy down the street you would want to hang out in front of the house with. Even though he allows his crew, the Diplomats, far too much time on the album (Jimmy Jones, in particular, isn’t ready for the opportunity given to him), the album still allows Cam to share his personal vision with very little obvious executive interference. It isn’t a terribly deep album, but it’s a very fun one that a lot of people will enjoy, even the most hardcore and pop sensible.