After a short delay, Cam’ron’s second installment of the Boss of All Bosses with DJ Drama finally hit the mixtape market on Tuesday night. Don’t judge this album based on the cover art (c’mon, Drama, step your Photoshop game up) – Cam gets back to his Killa Dipset status on this one.

Teamed with his Harlem protégé and fellow U.N. member Vado on every track, Cam’ron goes hard on this mixtape right from the get go. The first four tracks are all hot and as Cam can do as well as anyone, he’s spitting some witty rhymes.

However, Vado really does the heavy lifting on this mixtape. While he sounds a little bit like Cam’ron and has the same flow, he’s pretty smooth on all the hooks and a lot of his lines are actually better than Cam’s.

“I’m 20-something, still Young Money Mack Mainin’ / Champagne flowing / Bright leg glowing / Sour diesel blowing while my right hand plowing / And every broad glass I don’t ask, they knowin’ / I get that work back to the condo, they goin’ / Yup, they goin’,” Vado spits on “Nuthin’ Like Araab Musik.”

They Feelin’ Us and Bezel Up really have that Diplomats kind of sample on them. While that alone shouldn’t spark any rumors, it’s interesting given that Jim Jones recently alluded to a Dipset Reunion.

“Shout outs to Juelz, Zeke and Cam – Dipset for life,” Jones said on 106 & Park. “We might have some surprises for y’all, but I’m going to keep my mouth shut.”

The rest of the mixtape is OK. The only other notable tracks being Get Away, where Cam’ron and Vado rap over the classic Mobb Deep track of the same title, and the last song Whistle, which is just humorous that someone would rap over the Tetris song, though surprisingly pretty good.

Overall, Boss of All Bosses 2 is a solid mixtape and definitely worth the download.

What can I say about Mad Static? He’s a friend, a damn evocative poet, my longtime rap partner and a totally unpredictable musician – that’s why I love working with him. Below is an article I wrote about the degradation of rap and one of the people who ensures that it will never die, regardless of what NAS thinks. Check out these intensely personal tracks for a look into the mind of an indie poet.

by Bassey Etim

On the north side of Milwaukee, a billboard for local rapper Lil’ Gucci looks down on the neighborhood, and it tells those who walk by, “If U ain’t got it, then U broke,” a message about the rapper’s new album, serving as a constant reminder that, even in the last bastions of inner city art, commercialism conquers all — and every kid who sees the ad on the way to school invariably asks himself, “How do I get on a billboard?”

For the up-and-coming rock band, there’s the EP hastily recorded on a four-track stashed in some basement. Indie rappers, on the other hand, plot their rise through mixtapes, collections of tracks recorded over beats from popular songs.

How could those at the forefront of criticizing pop-rap for its lack of creativity release a countless barrage of tracks capitalizing on familiarity bred by countless radio replays? Milwaukee mixtape artist James Jones — or Mad Static as known by his fans on mixtape sharing website Datpiff.com — explanation is one part truth and two parts rationalization.

“If there’s a song out getting attention and I can’t stand the artist, I’ll take the beat and make it better,” he said.

To Jones, the Lil’ Gucci billboard does little more than tell the youth that, to rise above the hood, you’ve got to dedicate yourself to the status quo. Plus, whenever possible, add the prefix “lil’” or “young” to your name — the calling card for sellouts. Lil’ Gucci’s lyrics, for example, include philosophical gems like, “My rims so tall I think I gotta climb a ladder/ My car so wet I think I got a bad bladder.”

Still, there is an undercurrent of guilt in many mixtape veterans when explaining why they reuse beats from artists that sound exactly the same (literally) as Lil’ Gucci — especially in an age where the primary topic of conversation in underground rap is the degrading state of the art.

Mad Static himself actually stumbled into the craft. Before Jones ever recorded a song or even the means to attempt it, he came upon the beat for Nas’ legendary battle track Ether. After penning new verses to it, Jones moved on to more conventional pop tracks. Even though his lyricism quickly earned a group of fans, his listeners became annoyed with replays of songs long since worn out in the clubs.

Established rappers who put out mixtapes do so between original full-length albums, with the goal of keeping a buzz around their names. Underground rappers, on the other hand, often rely on mixtapes as their exclusive public front and fizzle out when the act gets tired. Facing that prospect, Jones went to work on a solo album, Written in Blood.

All of this begs a question about mixtapes: Do they work? Not for everyone, of course, but they’ve fueled Mad Static’s career even if he remains unsigned. His first mixtape posted on Soundclick.com, got just more than 300 downloads. A more recent release, the more poppy Summer Solstice, now has more than 1,000.

Culture wars?

Many prominent local emcees blame the inability to break through without a gimmick on a de facto hip-hop ban in Milwaukee clubs. Right now, the story is consigned to rumor and innuendo within the hip-hop community, but it’s widely considered fact.

“They try to turn away as many black people as possible,” Jones said of many clubs and music venues in Milwaukee. “And whenever hip-hop is played, you know shit is gonna go down.”

Still, despite his obvious concerns with the policy, Jones doesn’t think the alleged ban is ridiculous. It’s hard to blame a small business owner for taking every step necessary to retain a liquor license. If playing crunk music or gangsta rap attracts criminal elements and leads to fights, there’s no incentive to keep playing it. And when the only hip-hop music that gets airplay promotes the divinity of materialism, an endless cycle is spawned wherein rap cannibalizes itself. It’s reminiscent of the underground proliferation of pop-rap beats via mixtapes which strengthen the very producers that intellectual rappers despise.

To this band of rebels, pop-rap reinforces a point MTV and BET make to young blacks every day: To fit into the community, you’ve got to be a caricatured tough guy who peddles women and rims as currency.

“I’m not gonna fabricate shit because it’s popular,” Jones said, now passionately excoriating some of his fellow rappers. “These dudes say they throw hundreds at strippers, but the next thing I know, I see ‘em on my block looking crusty as fuck.”

Of course, there’s a more bare-bones reason for putting out mixtapes — they’re cheap and fast. So for an underground artist looking to keep his name in the public eye, a rapid-fire succession of mixtapes is a tempting proposition.

“It’s like, anything goes: It’s all you,” Jones said. “You gotta do a certain type of song to get airplay, especially in Milwaukee… whack ass rappers.”

The hip hop world has a unique history of artists co-opting each others’ work, a phenomenon that probably has more to do with the process of producing a rap album than some special culture. When a rock outfit wants to pay tribute to another band, they learn the chords, do a half-assed impression of the singer’s voice and get on with it. Not so in rap, where downloading a beat and rapping the same words over it could be accomplished by a functioning moron. (We’ll ignore all the functioning morons who write their own verses for now.) Instead, rappers big and small take collections of hot beats someone else probably bought from a producer and re-write the songs to create a mixtape. But does this constant recycling of material stifle hip-hop’s progress?

Believe me, I would love to steal all of his ideas. But for now, this will have to do.

It’s time for this editor to debate the only person with the stones to take himself on. Here’s a little feature we’ll call: Challenging Opponent™.

Yasseb: Let’s face it, rappers are attracted to mixtapes for the same reasons you’re attracted to that Arby’s off the highway – you’re lazy, and it’s the only thing around.

Bassey: But mixtapes are the heart and soul of hip-hop. It’s a community based on sharing ideas and ideals. When one artist pays tribute to another by riffing off his song…

Yasseb: What, an angel ejaculates? Get over it. All that happens is a lazier rapper makes 4 bucks a pop.

Bassey: Sometimes. But most mixtapes are free, and put up on sites like datpiff.com for the love of an art.

Yasseb: Love of an art? You can’t actually believe that, have you even been to that site lately? It’s all musty with the dank armpit stench of self-promoting hacks secretly hoping bored evil empire (Def Jam) execs love their fresh lyrical take on TI’s “Big things Poppin’”

Bassey: Come on, people might have secret motives for everything, but what’s so wrong with wanting to be heard, expressing yourself to a wide audience?

Yasseb: Oh yeah, my deepest emotional feelings are best summarized over a Lil’ Jon beat. Definitely won’t be making slight alterations to his lyrics that are almost clever. Definitely won’t mention how many platinum chains I would steal from a drug dealer who shot my fictional friend. Nope. Definitely won’t be doing that.

Bassey: Wow, so you proved your point – there’s bad music out there, I get it. But that’s not exclusive to mixtapes. In fact, I’d venture to say that when you average it all out, mixtapes have more lyrical quality because the artist is taking a song they love and rewriting poetry that’s about their struggles.

Yasseb: Yeah, their struggle to use another artists’ beats as a cheap vehicle to draw attention to themselves.

Bassey: I don’t get it, what’s with the cynicism? Wanting your music heard doesn’t make you a publicity hound… unless its rap music, right?

Yasseb: No. There’s nothing wrong with wanting your music heard, but that’s different from getting someone else’s music heard with your nasaly lame voice over it.

Bassey: Ridiculous, established artists with totally non-annoying voices have been on mixtapes since the beginning. Rap wouldn’t be what it is today without all those great mixtapes on the street giving young artists a chance.

Yasseb: True, rap wouldn’t have gotten where it is today, but where has it gone lately? Once one guy gets famous, 10 more rappers from the same area piggyback his style and render it lame. These remixes turn cheating off another guy into a culture. It’s like Common said, “So many rhymes about rims, I’m surprised niggas ain’t become tires.”

Bassey: Ahah! You forget about Common’s little known 1991 mixtape, “Unamerican Caravan.”

Yasseb: Maybe… wait a second, those were all original beats!

Bassey: Really?

Yasseb: I don’t know, beats in 1991 all sounded the same.

Bassey: Alright, maybe we can just agree that you are…

Yasseb, Bassey: A challenging opponent.