b. Cameron Giles, 4 February 1976, Harlem, New York City, New York, USA. This Harlem-based rapper was a highly talented teenage basketball player who took to the streets after failing to win a college scholarship. His rapping skills were to be his saviour, however, and by the mid-90s he was part of Sean "Puffy" Combs' Bad Boy posse and collaborating with former basketball team-mate Ma$e as Killa Cam and Murder Ma$e in Children Of The Corn. Ma$e subsequently recommended his friend to Lance Rivera's Epic-distributed Untertainment label. The newly named Cam'ron gained his first US chart entry in 1998 with the Magnum P.I.-sampling "3-5-7", which was featured on the Woo soundtrack. He reunited with Ma$e on his breakthrough hit "Horse & Carriage", which was followed by the US Top 10 debut Confessions Of Fire. Although never attaining the same heights as the hit singles, the album's mined the pop/rap formula to good effect with the production work of Darrell "Digga" Branch earning particular acclaim. The misguided follow-up S.D.E. (Sports, Drugs, and Entertainment) was a loosely autobiographical album featuring the minor hits "Let Me Know" (based around a sample of ABC's Monday Night Football theme) and "What Means The World To You".
Cam'ron relocated to Jay-Z's Roc-A-Fella label for his third release 2002's Come Home With Me, a release which did much to restore his reputation on the rap scene and generated the hit singles "Oh Boy" and "Hey Ma". The following year he teamed up with his protégés Juelz Santana, Jim Jones and Freekey Zeekey under the Diplomats moniker, recording the Roc-A-Fella album Diplomatic Immunity. A second Diplomats album arrived in late 2004, shortly before the next instalment in Cam'ron's solo career, Purple Haze.
The following year Cam'ron joined the Warner Music Group and began work on a new album. On 23 October that year, he was shot three times in an attempted carjacking in Washington, D.C. His public slanging matches with Ma$e and Jay-Z also made the news. He returned to the charts in summer 2006 with Killa Season, the title of which was shared with a straight to video movie directed by the rapper.
