Debut album for Craig Miller aka Kam, rapper from South LA, cousin of Ice Cube who made his debut in the soundtrack of the movie "Boyz n the Hood" (1991), and then collaborated on Cube's second solo album in the same year.
Kam's album shares thematic and musical similarities with O'Shea Jackson's early solo records: the topics chosen by Willowbrook's MC are pro-black and political, touching on racism, exploitation of African Americans, black on black violence, government, life in the ghetto and institutional racism.
Production is provided by a dozen different beatmakers: unlike other discs produced by Cube affiliates, this LP features a musical choice proposed by the unknown production team Torcha Chamba, made up of Coze, Stan Jones, Stone and Tootie, names you should never have heard, also because they've probably only worked on this tape in their entire life. Other rhythms come from Chris Charity & Derek Lynch as Solid Scheme, the production duo linked to Das EFX, Rashad & DJ Pooh from the Boogiemen, T-Bone from Lench Mob and Mr. Woody, another Ice Cube affiliate. The sound engineers come from Lench Mob, so the overall music of the project should sound similar to that of the Cube and Lench Mob efforts, but sadly it doesn't: the production is decent, but never quite up to those beats, there are a lot of raw, hard and skeletal funky rhythms, however, for most of the listening, they sound cheap and poor.
Throughout the 43 minutes of the record, the errors in production continue to follow each other from start to finish, as if part of the rhythms were made by amateurs (and it is). Also, they swap all the time, there's never the same beatmaker twice in a row, so an annoyingly erratic sound comes out: Torcha Chamba mistake the sample in the intro by choosing an annoying noise, so the errors continue among bad samples used, thin and slow drums, rhythms lacking in inventiveness and mediocre sounds.
There are several easy and generic funky-jazzy samples, the drums hitting hard and pounding, but without too much conviction. Kam manages to keep the record on a consistently good level thanks to his socio-conscious and political lyricism: his angry and Afrocentric lyrics are interpreted with a discreet technique and a velvety flow and, unlike many other political albums of the period, he delivers his bars with a slow and simple style, syncopated and tight, sometimes spoken and fluent, but never shouted and hardcore, he doesn't have much energy in the delivery.
Basically, the man never interprets the hooks, leaving the task to the samples and various bridges, however, he doesn't have a good ear for rhythms and samples. When he's lucky enough to be able to play his tracks on a good beat, he finds the best results, but this rarely happens: DJ Pooh should be the best producer by far in this edition, even better than Solid Scheme, nevertheless, he arrives in "Watts Riot" with an annoying tight looped sample in the background. Drum hard, lean and slow, dry and sharp, Kam delivers with his slow and flowing style, then Ice Cube eats the cut with a slow, smoothness, but hardcore flow. The producers disappoint, Torcha Chamba only manages to place something decent when he copies a sublime light synth sounding Dre (in "Hang 'Um High"), while Solid Scheme does almost worse, with two mediocre choices: "Peace Treaty" features a bad sample also used for the hook, a metallic drum and a bare boom bap.
Consisting of intro, outro and ten tracks, Kam's debut is a coherent and robust record that features several funky cuts loaded with thoughtful lyrics. The strongest point lies in the concluding song with Ice Cube, but the white establishment doesn't like the whole project, distributed by Street Knowledge Records and Atlantic (via East West): the record ends up distant in the charts, entering that of pop records and reaching the top 20 among rap albums, in any case, it's a clear demonstration of the fact that in the early nineties, West Coast wasn't just blunts and shootings, it wasn't just Chronic and generic gangsta rap, hip-hop was political and it was done well!
Rating: 7/10.
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