Come Home With Me

Along with Jay-Z’s The Black Album, Cam’ron’s 2002 album Come Home with Me helped establish the Roc-A-Fella Records aesthetic. “Hey Ma” paired a vintage soul sample with an edgy attitude, but its overall demeanor was sweet, and it ended up being a definitive song of its era. The album featured two innovative young producers in Just Blaze and Kanye West—“Dead or Alive” is one of the early exponents of Kanye’s “chipmunk soul” style—but Cam’s rapping always drives the beats, not the other way around. Heartfelt, irritable, and frequently hilarious, he remains faithful only to his own conflicted core.