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.
