Songoftheday 8/23/23 - Yo, now I was downtown clubbin', ladies night, seen shorty she was crazy right...
"Hey Ma" - Cam'ron featuring Juelz Santana, Freekey Zekey, and Toya
from the album Come Home With Me (2002)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #3 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 20
Today's song comes from rapper Cameron "Cam'ron" Giles, who landed a huge crossover hit in the summer of 2002 with "Oh Boy". Another cut from the Come Home With Me album, "Welcome To New York City", had his boss at the label Jay-Z on the record, but wasn't promoted to radio, but unsolicited airplay got the track to #55 on Billboard magazine's R&B Songs chart. Cam'ron's next proper single from his Come Home With Me album, "Hey Ma", also pairs him up with rapper Juelz Santana (LaRon James), and brings in newcomer Freekey Zekey, aka Ezekiel Giles, Cam'ron's cousin. With the main mix were written by Cam'ron and Santana with producer Darryl "DR Period" Pittman over a prominent sample of the Commodores' ballad "Easy" giving Lionel Richie writing credit. After the first chorus run-through, which features singer Toya who had a top-20 pop hit at the close of 2001 with "I Do!", Juelz takes the first verse, which has him macking on an older woman. That's followed by Cam'ron dubiously shuffling between his current girl and his ex. Freekey is just there for color in the "chorus" part. The production makes good use of the sample and "hardens" it up, but Cam'ron's delivery is so sing-song to be distracting. The music video also uses some baaad misogynist tropes as well. But in the end the song became Cam'ron's highest-charting hit...
"Hey Ma" became Cam'ron's second top ten hit on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 in November of 2002, while climbing to #4 on the Rap Singles list. On the radio, the song rose to #6 on the Mainstream Top-40 airplay chart, #7 on their R&B Singles chart (odd that he did better on the "pop" chart), and #2 on the dance/R&B-oriented Rhythmic format. Internationally, "Hey Ma" scored Cam'ron's first and only top ten hit in the United Kingdom at #8, while reaching the top-40 in Ireland (#12), New Zealand (#15), and Australia (#29).
With the momentum from these two big hits, Cam'ron brought his old collective The Diplomats (which included Juelz and Freekey Zekey along with Jim Jones) to release Diplomatic Immunity in the spring of 2003, which went to #8 on the Billboard 200 sales tally and topped the R&B Albums list. The first single from the set, the Starship-sampling "Built This City", snuck on to the R&B Songs chart at #94. A second single, "Dipset Anthem" (which capitalized on the name placement on the "Hey Ma" video), was the groups biggest, peaking at #64 on the R&B chart. The album sold a half million copies, but their 9/11 conspiracy fetishism caused such a stir that Jay-Z rightfully dropped them after. A second album arrived a year later on Koch Records, which went to #46 on the Billboard 200 and #8 on the R&B Albums list, with the single "S.A.N.T.A.N.A." stalling at #86 on the R&B list. Also in 2003, Cam'ron was the featured rapper on Mariah Carey's single "Boy (I Need You)" from her Charmbracelet album which went to #17 in the UK but stalled down at #68 on Billboard's R&B Singles chart. He also was on Juelz Santana's lead artist debut "Dipset (Santana's Town)", which went to #70 on the R&B Singles chart, and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Duo/Group Rap Performance, losing to "Shake Ya Tailfeather" from Nelly, P. Diddy, and Murphy Lee.
Cam'ron's next solo disc, Purple Haze, was released a month after the Diplomats' second set (but still on Jay-Z's Roc-A-Fella) but was less enthusiastically promoted to radio. The album went to #20 on the Billboard 200, and #4 on the R&B Albums list, and sold over a half million copies. Despite five of its track reaching Billboard's R&B Songs airplay chart, only the last, "Down And Out", made the R&B top-40 at #29, and was the only one to nick the Hot 100 at #94. Of course that was more to the feature from rapper/producer Kanye West as well as singer Syleena Johnson.
Feeling sidelined, Cam'ron left Roc-A-Fella to get his own imprint Diplomatic Man on Asylum Records, where he put out Killa Season in 2006, which took a week at #2 on the Billboard 200, tying Come Home With Me for highest-charting set, and spent two weeks at #1 on the R&B Albums list. However its two singles stopped in the 60's on the R&B Songs chart, with "Touch It Or Not" featuring rap ringer Lil Wayne doing slightly better at #62. Three years later, a second disc, Crime Pays, was released, but while the album took a week at #3 on the Billboard 200, and topped the R&B Albums list for a week, it didn't sell nearly enough, and none of its singles made any notice.
The rapper's next two records with collaborations with rapper Vado, which landed two charting singles as a lead artist with "Speaking In Tungs" (#82) and "Hey Muma" (#84). Since then, Cam'ron has put out a plethora of unofficial mixtapes and extended play singles. His most recent proper album, Purple Haze 2, came out in 2019 on the Killa Entertainment label, which went to #180 on the Billboard 200. He also collaborated with DJ/producer A-Trak for U Wasn't There in 2022. This month, the rapper released a new single "It's Only Money".
As for Freekey Zekey, he released a solo album Book Of Ezekiel on Diplomat/Asylum Records in 2007 after a prison stint, which went to #154 on the Billboard 200 and #23 on the R&B Albums chart but had no success with any of the singles.
Juelz will be back to the series.
(2/10)
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Up tomorrow: R&B singer is self-certified real.
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