James Cam’ron: Killa Season 20 Years Later

Two decades after its release, POW revisits Cameron Giles’s pivot toward street-level cinema and speaks to his collaborators.

Art by DJ Short

The hijackers were after him. Not Jimmy, not Juelz, not JR. Snipers—some say for hire—in Dubya’s DC tracked Cameron Giles, the head of the snake that was Harlem’s Diplomat movement.

The lead gunman pierced bullet holes in Cam’s Willy Wonka-blue Lamborghini, splattering blood over $200k worth of the shit that Gretzky skate on. Red lights and Roc signs reportedly flashed as Cam whipped away with his crew and his dignity intact.

“I felt disrespected,” Cam’ron told UPN reporters after being released from Howard University Hospital and landing in New Jersey. “Because nobody’s going to take a quarter-million car from me, let alone a five-cent piece of chewing gum.”

This was a few months after Cam had signed a $4.5 million deal with Roc-a-Fella Records. Flanked by promotional party buses and multiple members of his crew, he had just left a show at Howard homecoming. Gunshots rang after a hand motion was made—possible in reference to Jay Z, possibly an affiliate of Diamond Dallas Page—but Cam escaped the attempted carjacking materially and spiritually unscathed.

The only physical damage was three bleeding bullet wounds, two of which left his right arm without feeling for close to a year. In theory, the numbness should’ve slowed the hand that penned Platinum pop hits for 3LW and each song, skit, and ad-lib attached to Purple Haze. It didn’t.