Dash connected with A-Trak, another purveyor of the cool in his own right – through his Fool’s Gold record label, as a solo artist, a member of Duck Sauce, and a string of memorable Fool’s Gold Day Off concerts. Throughout U Wasn’t There, Cam’ron is well aware of his place in hip-hop’s cultural canon, recapping his resume in the opening verse of “What You Do”: “On Fox 5, I cursed Bill O’Reilly out… Left my girl, I’m done with love and shit/ Went on 60 Minutes, told the world fuck a snitch/ Had the pink fur, pink phone/ Pink rings, pink chrome/ Produced movies with Queen Latifah/ Went to the Emmy’s smelling like Wiz Khalifa…”Ĭam’ron’s momentum post Purple Haze, Killa Season and Crime Pays was supposed to move forward by veering left. For an all-too-brief moment in time, New York City belonged to Dipset. That’s why I don’t want my kids to be too cool, ‘cause being too cool means you’ve survived a lot of pain.”īeing too cool has been a thriving business model for Dash and Cam’ron since the late ‘90s and early aughts when the Harlem rapper built a dynasty based on a singular iconography: an awe-inspiring vocabulary, nursery rhyme cadences and a winning strategy spearheaded by Dame’s foresight. And these are things most people go through when they’re older, but once you go through some real pain, does not bother you anymore. My mother died when I was 15 and then my girl died when I was in my twenties. And for me, maybe it’s a gift and a curse that I went through severe pain very early in my life. “The only thing that should give you anxiety is if it’s compromised your health and your freedom. “Never let anxiety control your action,” he tells me between inhales. On this particular day though, he’s content and even surprised that this album, some eight years in the making, came out in the first place. These days, you’re more likely to scroll past Dame in the endless stream of the almighty algorithmic timeline than you are to see him promoting a new project – his frequent appearances in under-a-minute hustle culture videos find him dropping gems from what he’s learned in over three decades of a tumultuous career full of some major wins, but also plenty of personal loss. As we talk over Zoom, he rolls up a joint while someone from his team stands just off screen, cell phone in hand to record his latest round of interviews for Cam’ron and A-Trak’s collaborative U Wasn’t There to repost on his Instagram Stories. Patrick Johnson wants you to rejoice: it’s almost Pine Barrens season.ĭamon Dash isn’t stressing about much at this point in his career – or if he is, he hides it well. We keep the computers ‘putin, so support real, independent music journalism by subscribing to Passion of the Weiss on Patreon.
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