MHz - "World Premier" b/w "Camu" (Fondle 'Em Records, 1998)
Just over a week ago, May 25 commemorated the fifth
anniversary of the death of Camu Tao. He was thirty, and he had been battling
lung cancer for three years. His debut solo album King of Hearts was left unfinished, and the record label that his
friend El-P had signed him to, Definitive Jux, was struggling financially and
on its way to folding. The King of Hearts
demos got an official release two years later, but compared to the rest of his
catalog, they sound spare and unfinished. Unfortunately, the rest of Camu’s
catalog consists entirely of work with other groups, a few featured verses on
other artists’ projects, and three 12” solo singles. For a rapper as distinct and
exciting as Camu to have so little recorded music is a shame.
Fortunately, the recorded career that Camu had was pretty
consistently great, dating back to his first appearance on MHz’s “World Premier”
single in 1998. MHz, composed of Camu Tao, Copywrite, Tage Future, Jakki tha
Motamouth, and RJD2, is probably the best rap group that ever came out of
Columbus, Ohio, and Camu was the immediate breakout member. After a landmark
appearance on WKCR’s Stretch Armstrong & Bobbito Show on February 19, 1998,[1]
Bobbito signed the group to his Fondle ‘Em label[2]
and prepped the “World Premier” single for later that year. Since the MHz were
more of a collective of like-minded artists rather than a full-fledged
group, Tage and Jakki don’t appear on
this first single at all, and rather than handling the beats himself, RJD2 only
gets coproduction credit on one of the two songs.[3]
Instead the focus is on Copywrite, who handles the first verse on the a-side,
and on Camu, who finishes out the a-side and has the whole b-side to himself.
Over chopped samples of guitar and vibes from the Rolling Stones’
“Monkey Man” that sound a lot tinnier and rougher than the sounds in the Stones’
original, Copywrite makes his stance on wack rappers clear from the outset of “World
Premier”: “We don't need gimmicks/Wack ones still ride the dilz till they
exceed the speed limits.” Copywrite sounds a bit like he doesn’t know how to
flow over a beat, so he’s constantly changing his tempo and cadence in a way
that sounds not unlike a much less elegant Pharoahe Monch verse. Copy’s still a
very raw talent here, but Camu is something else entirely. His voice and
delivery are so out there that the start of his verse—which, in a mid-nineties
underground rap tradition follows not a hook, but a bunch of people adlibbing
into the mic in place of something catchy—is outright jarring. Camu’s vocal
style is so completely unique that it sounds as if it was birthed in a vacuum
devoid of influences. Right off the bat, he’s delivering non-sequitors (“Handle
the jewels with care when you're ridin'/My aggressiveness is on another plane”)
followed immediately by a flow that renders his words gibberish. He sounds like
the local wino with a bunch of ideas that he can’t quite hash out in a coherent
way. As a result, predicting what Camu’s next line will sound like is basically
impossible. Camu’s performance is instantly seared into your brain after
hearing it. MHz’s premier song stands as their best, a perfect distillation of
their approach to underground rap tropes.
The b-side is titled “Camu,” and similarly to Wu-Tang’s “M.E.T.H.O.D.
Man” from Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers),
it serves as a solo showcase for the group’s breakout member. Unlike “M.E.T.H.O.D.
Man”’s catchy spell-along chorus, “Camu”’s chorus—which also uses spelling—isn’t
even that noticeable the first time through. Camu doesn’t really stop rapping
at all for most of the song’s runtime, and since he goes from verse to chorus
to verse so quickly and the beat doesn’t change up at all, the chorus might not
as well exist. The beat by the awesomely named Mentor for the City[4]
isn’t anything special, just a three note piano loop, a horn stab, and some
anemic drums, and it quickly gets old when just listening to the instrumental.
With Camu free-associative bars on top, however, the beat’s deficiencies stop
being a problem. Why need a great beat when Camu can provide all of the song’s
color? Like a lot of songs released on Fondle ‘Em, “Camu” sounds like a first
take vocal recording and the resulting raggedy quality gives the song the feel of
a freestyle. Like his verse on “World Premier,” Camu is completely
unpredictable, stumbling wildly through the beat. It’s an exhilarating performance,
and it shows Camu at the absolute peak of his rapping talents.
MHz put out one more single, “Rocket Science,” on Fondle’ Em
the next year and then put out a compilation of the Fondle ‘Em stuff, some
freestyles, and assorted demos as the indispensable Table Scraps in 2001. RJD2 and Camu signed to El-P’s Definitive Jux
label as solo artists as MHz ceased to be a going concern. While RJD2 took off
with Deadringer, Camu took a while to
develop a solo voice on the uneven S.A. Smash album in 2002. He found that
voice by abandoning rapping in favor of singing. Take “Oxycontin,” Camu’s solo
track from El-P’s Collecting the Kid compilation
from 2004. This is not a common progression for a staunchly underground rapper.
Yet even in his new role as a singer, Camu was able to come up with material
that sounded completely his own. Considering how naturally he took to strange
ideas like “Oxycontin,” it’s not too surprising that he switched to singing so
soon after the MHz days. He had mastered his style as a rapper and moved on to
something new. It’s that quality that makes Camu so dearly missed by his fans
and peers.
The remaining members of MHz reunited for their first
official album in 2012, four years after Camu’s death. A few great unreleased
Camu verses appear on the record.
"World Premier"
"Camu" doesn't seem to be available on YouTube, so here is 2004's "Oxycontin" instead
Coming Up on Spray Cans:
Rammellzee
& K-Rob
Big
Twan
Cashless
Society
Canibus
Meccalicious
Black
Attack
Royal Fam
Abstract Tribe Unique or the Nonce
[1]
Where Camu was unsurprisingly the most memorable. Portions of the group’s
freestyles from this episode can be found on the MHz Table Scraps compilation.
[2] I
said in the Arsonists entry of Spray Cans
that I would probably end up covering every Fondle ‘Em release in this series.
Here’s #2.
[3]
These three would get their time on the second MHz single for Fondle ‘Em, “Rocket
Science.”
[4] We
need more rap names like Mentor for the City that sound like they were reading
a lot of Jack Kirby comics while they were coming up with names.
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