Look how young our pal Cam’ron is here, in his very first solo MTV interview in 1998. This is Killa Cam before his pink mink days, talking about rapping for Biggie, making mixtapes, growing up with other local rappers, and—good lord!— he was just a baby.
The interview comes to us via MTV and Genius, who have partnered to dig up old MTV content from the ‘90s. (Like this unaired ODB spot from 1997.) Here’s where we’ll yearn for the days when MTV (and BET for that matter) was actually a music television network, not a reality TV channel like it is now.
Highlights from this interview include a 22 year-old Cam talking about getting kicked out of the junior college in Texas where he’d gone for basketball, sleeping over at Mase’s house when he was a kid, and If you listen closely, you’ll hear lots of mentions of little bits of Cam’ron history: He talks about writing Lil’ Cease’s verse on Lil’ Kim’s “Crush On You”, and putting his mom on a track “to break the barrier for parents in rap.”
Sidenote: you have to wonder who the person was behind the camera of this interview, considering Cam’ron was still just a kid and Not Shit. He may have had that Dipset confidence, but he definitely hadn’t reached the point where he could peddle shower curtains with his face on them for 70 bones a pop. [Fader]