The rivalry between the East Coast and the West Coast radically altered the trajectory of hip-hop forever. There were the deaths of Biggie and Tupac, Outkast declaring Southern legitimacy at the 1995 Source Awards, and the rise of many superstars along the way. Regionalism still mattered back then. Today, though, with the prominence of the internet, regions aren’t inclined to vouch for supremacy. Instead, they’re all working hand in hand, meaning crossovers don’t mean as much. The days of Cam’ron and Dipset working with Lil Wayne may not mean as much because the competition isn’t there.
Unfortunately, New York hip-hop has waned over the years. The mecca thrives on competition and the ecosystem hasn’t had much of that outside of the infamous Drake/Kendrick Lamar beef. Consequently, someone like Cam’ron will note how much the landscape has changed over the years.
In an interview with XXL in 2017, he reflected on the hip-hop scene of the moment. There, Killa Cam used a basketball analogy to remember when people used to be at each other’s throats. But now, both in hip-hop and in basketball, everyone is just a lot friendlier. Consequently, the primary gap between people is just a matter of age.
Cam’ron Dishes on the sTate of New York Hip-Hop
“With me, I don’t really dissect cities [by] East Coast-West Coast like I used to. To me, everybody pretty much gets along nowadays, whether it’s basketball or music or anything. Like, it used to be a time where the players, let’s just use basketball for example, players didn’t speak to each other,” Cam’ron explained.
“If you played for the Bulls, you don’t speak to the Knicks. If you played for the Knicks, you don’t speak to Indiana. Like real fights used to go on. Same thing with music. It’s like, if you from Queens, you didn’t speak with nobody from Brooklyn”
At the end of the day, it’s just a matter of sound and your preference. Cam even noted that, although trap music was a distinctly Southern form of rap, it’s morphed onto a larger stage. Anybody can do anything if the sound is right. “So I don’t really say New York vibe or down South vibe. To me, it’s just sounds at this point ’cause it doesn’t matter where you from,” Cam’ron continued. “You don’t have to be from Atlanta to make trap music anymore, like, as opposed to 10 years ago.”
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