After the commercial success of 2002's Come Home With Me, Cam'ron's long-gestating rise to fame opened a portal to a subculture no one could predict and only few could understand. But for those who did, Dipset-mania became its own kind of religion, with laws and codes and improbable tenets. The Diplomats, Cam's collection of Harlem provocateurs, were a ragtag bunch — chirpy young upstart Juelz Santana, churlish capo Jim Jones, bricklaying enforcer Hell Rell (incarcerated), and absent but celebrated pal Freaky Zekey (also incarcerated). Over time, the crew would grow into a bloated mass, but on this bizarre, exuberant double album, they exist in purest form. Not necessarily because they're at the height of their powers — Cam is as casually assaultive and dexterous as ever, but Juelz was some years away from grace, and Jones may never get that far. But this double album is so overstuffed and so radiantly weird that it insisted on the kind of cult around the crew that eventually formed. They (foolishly?) called themselves the Taliban, hollered and pounded over the single greatest collection of chipmunk soul samples ever collected on one album, and rapped ludicrously about moving coke, building a movement, and squiring… read more »