Who Shot Cam'ron?

Brash Beginnings

Even in the excess-driven rap world, Cam'ron is known for being gaudy. Liberace gaudy. He wears royal blue fur hats, matching waist-length fur coats and pink polos. Gold necklaces, chains and diamonds dangle from his neck. On MTV, he has compared himself to Malcolm X and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. -- just the kind of brashness that creates a buzz.

He has his own record label, Diplomat Records, and plans for a clothing line. He markets his own liquor, SIZZURP, a cognac-based purple punch, and cologne, "Oh Boy." And he is directing the movie "Killa Season," which his publicists say will trace his self-proclaimed "rise to the King of Harlem."

It's quite a story. Before he got into rap, Cameron Giles was a standout basketball player at his high school in Harlem. His coach, Charles Johnson, recalls a "very feisty and temperamental" player who was often jotting rap lyrics into notebooks.

He reportedly had basketball scholarship offers from colleges but didn't have the grades. He dropped out of high school in 1994 and hustled on the street, according to associates and news reports. But basketball remained a passion. He got his GED, and hoped to make a comeback at a junior college in Texas. That dream died when he was kicked out after a fight in a dorm room, according to a basketball coach there.

Back in New York, Cam'ron hooked up with a buddy from his high school basketball team, Mason Bethea, who had become a prominent rapper known as Ma$e. Ma$e introduced Cam'ron in early 1997 to Biggie Smalls, the Notorious B.I.G., giving Cam'ron his first huge break.

Smalls was so impressed with the young rapper that he helped get one of Cam'ron's songs, "Crush on You," onto an album by Lil' Kim. The rap, performed by Lil' Kim and Lil' Cease, was a hit.

Soon Cam'ron was rapping on his own. His debut album, "Confessions of Fire," sold 600,000 copies. His second, "Sports, Drugs and Entertainment," sold a half-million. In 2002, he went platinum, selling more than 1 million copies of "Come Home With Me."

As his career rocketed, Cam'ron formed a loose-knit group of rappers, known as the Diplomats, or the Dipset, that often collaborated on albums.

With success came more trouble.

Biggie Smalls was slain in 1997. Another of Cam'ron's mentors, a rapper named Big L, was gunned down outside his New York brownstone in 1999. Then in 2003, Freaky Zeaky -- a member of the Diplomats-- was wounded during a street gun battle.

That same year, someone on Cam'ron's tour bus was alleged to have fired shots at three women in a car on a Boston highway. Police arrested a member of the rapper's entourage on handgun and assault charges. They said the shooting stemmed from an earlier dispute in a nightclub.

Cam'ron got busted, too. In 2002, he was arrested on gun and drug charges. He pleaded guilty to weapons charges in that case in February and got probation.