Mixtape Review-Ghetto Heaven by Cam’ron

by Dan-O

Every year a mixtape comes out that defines head scratching fascination, full of the kind of mind numbing juxtaposition you’d never expect. Last year it was Shyne with a paranoid illuminati laden mob mixtape(https://freemusicempire.com/2012/10/30/shyne-gangland-mixtape-review/) delivered in cracked out Muppet voice. It was just as weird as that description made it sound and Ghetto Heaven is even weirder.

It’s less surprising coming from the world of Cam’ron. He’s still the only rapper I can name who has done a heartfelt track about Irritable Bowel Syndrome (great song). On Ghetto Heaven he surprises by turning the Golden Girls theme song into a knocking song and following the looped up line “thank you for being a friend” with “I wanna say thank you…to the cocaina…” Kinsmuv is the producer who made it but really…who else would take that and rap over it? Who would rap over it and call the track Golden Friends so everyone knew he knew? Cam is the answer. So many moments on Ghetto Heaven scream ONLY CAM. Only Cam would make a song where he deals with being Catfished by an Instagram chick, the song is actually called Instagram(Catfish), for reasons no one knows its smooth slimy and R.Kelly feeling.

The most surprised I was came on a freestyle over a Jodeci song (Come and Talk to Me) when he responds to Jay’s catastrophically terrible Pound Cake verse (where he started just saying cake over and over like he ran out of words). The Cam’ron I remember was laughing at Jay for wearing open toed sandals and socks but this one is a little more reflective “She said Jay made you a millionaire and looked me in the eyes/Said cake, cake, cake, got that from the pies / We made each other millions, that was my reply / But had a mill before I met him, baby, that ain’t no lie/See he named some Harlem cats and homie from the Chi/but my thing is he ain’t name nobody from the Stuy” In a lot of ways Ghetto Heaven is the anti-Magna Carta Holy Grail since 2013 Jay is trying to prove how much he’s progressed and changed while Killa Cam proves over and over again that he’s still very much connected. Not just to Harlem and the people he came up with but to poverty and misfortune “My car F#$% up accelerator choked I ain’t got time to tell you haters jokes, on a stoop they try and sell a player coke now I walk inside my lobby and the elevator broke…DAMN! (Outside)” He references women in beauty parlors squabbling, has a song about telling women they need love and that he isn’t the one to give it (Think You Need Love). The song is all piano no drums and tons of Biz Markie feeling crazy talk.

Aside from the smash Jungle featuring TI and Yo Gotti on Ghetto Heaven the allure is getting inside Cam’s elusive mind. This is a man who was once perched at the top of the game with the hottest album (Come Home with Me) and the hottest crew(Dipset) and where is he now? He feels like the elder statesman of juveniles, the twenty one year old high school sophomore who knows how to skip class and not get caught. At nineteen tracks it’s a lot of music and some of it is useless, on Let Me Work he grabs three Harlem battle rappers and just lets them rap after his introduction, but most of the tape is classically and fantastically odd. Just the way you’d want your Cam’ron to be.

stream or download Ghetto Heaven below:

http://www.datpiff.com/Camron-Ghetto-Heaven-Vol-1-mixtape.494468.html