Music

Cam’ron Is Writing a Movie, and Here’s a New Song in the Meantime

“Have you ever seen the movie Unfaithful?” Cam’ron asked me yesterday afternoon, a few minutes into our phone call. He was trying to draw a parallel, but I haven’t, and I hadn’t come prepared to discuss it with Killa Cam either, so he had to explain the premise: It’s Diane Lane and Richard Gere, who are married. Lane’s character conducts a clandestine affair, leading to all kinds of scandal and suspense. Naturally—and this should come as no surprise given his long documented cinematic affinity and wide-ranging pop culture appetites—it’s a touchstone for Cam right now.

“We’re going to put out a movie with the album and keep putting movies after that,” he explained, detailing his recent creative pursuits. “So instead of shooting nine, ten, eleven videos what we’re doing is writing the script.” The script he’s leaning toward right now is about a married white woman who rents out her guest house to a black man. As the Unfaithful reference might suggest, things quickly take a romantic turn. “Kinda ‘once you go black you never go back’ kind of thing, but it’s kind of deeper than that,” Cam elaborated. The rapper, whose past cinematic works include Paid in Full and the album tie-in movie Killa Season, is still the same tongue-twisting, street legit musician he’s always been, but these days his ambitions are grander than that.

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“The movies that I’ve done in the past, everybody’s been like ‘Cam always gets away in a movie playing Cam,’” he was quick to explain. “So, like, I’m trying to step outside the box a little bit just to show my range in acting.” On top of that, well, movies are awesome. If you could make movies, wouldn’t you? “To be honest, it’s less headache, more money, and much more fun to do,” Cam agreed. “Music, even if I wanted to stop, I don’t think I could stop. It’s just so embedded in my blood that it’s easy to do records. But it’s always fun to take on a new task also.”

So, yeah, Cam’ron has some movie plans on the horizon. Still, along with them are music plans. As he padded around his house on the phone, Cam described his recent recording habits, which are equally domestic. “My studio’s in my house, so I probably do two or three songs a week,” he explained. “At least six, seven songs a month on a lazy month. So it’s just sitting here. So some of this stuff needs to be let go and let people hear it.”

One of the first things he let go was a long-teased rap over a sample of Vanessa Carlton’s indelible “A Thousand Miles,” paired with a video that he said ties into his movie concept. “It’s a hot beat,” he said. “The beat is dope. Nobody’s ever done it. Nobody would probably even think about doing it, and I like to do things that’s outside the box. That’s wassup. I love the original song. I love Vanessa Carlton’s version of it, and I was like ‘I bet you I can do a whole song to it.’ And I did, pretty much. I just read an article, she was really excited about the song. She thought it was dope. So that’s also a plus about it. I just like to do things that’s outside the box.”

Up next, to balance out the more commercial sound of that record, is a back-to-the-basics cut called “D.I.A.,” which stands for “Done It All.” It opens, “In my car I had two girls, a quarter mil, pill poppers, and pistols, y’all,” and it continues on in tales of drugs and excess from there, weaving together references that range from King Solomon to famed University of Tennessee basketball coach Pat Summitt to Mobb Deep’s The Infamous. There are “50 keys in the tub, that’s a real bird bath,” and heroin fiends are described as acting “like niggas looking for Pokemon.”

It’s a fucking blast, and it’s just the beginning of what’s to come. Not only is the album pretty much done and just waiting on the movie release, Cam said that he hopes to have a total of two albums out before the end of the year. He’s not sweating anything. “If you ask me I don’t feel that anybody’s better than me when I sit down and get focused when it’s time to come to it,” he mused, when asked to reflect on his musical outlook these days. “But I leave that up to the writers and the bloggers and everybody else who has an opinion on that.” Form your own opinion and blog it accordingly, but here’s mine: You should listen to “D.I.A.” right absolutely now, this instant.

Follow Kyle Kramer on Twitter.