The Diplomats: Diplomatic Immunity

The run time of hip-hop albums tends to fluctuate with the times. In the aftermath of Notorious B.I.G. and 2Pac's double-disc opuses Life After Death and All Eyez On Me, countless rappers were struck with an instinct to pad their work to double-disc length. Later, Jay-Z's 13-track The Blueprint made a terrific case for quality over quantity and hinted at a shift toward more reasonable duration. But then Jay-Z released the predictably uneven double-disc The Blueprint 2: The Gift & The Curse, only to follow it with Blueprint 2.1, a single disc which downsizes many of Blueprint 2's weaker songs and adds a pair of bonus tracks. While the Roc-A-Fella head honcho is paring down, his labelmate Cam'ron super-sizes on Diplomatic Immunity, a horrifically bloated 110-minute folly produced with his group, The Diplomats. Following a few false starts, Cam'ron signed to Roc-A-Fella and attained instant stardom with "Oh Boy," which boasted a Just Blaze beat so catchy that Cam'ron could have recited the Pledge Of Allegiance over it and still scored a hit. Diplomatic Immunity picks up where Cam'ron's Come Home With Me left off, offering gorgeous, soulful beats marred by a boorish devotion to asinine pop-gangsta clichés. Pretty on the outside, ugly on the inside, Diplomatic Immunity boasts only brief appearances from Roc-A-Fella production superstars Kanye West and Just Blaze, and has the poor taste to sample Starship's "We Built This City" for the imaginatively titled "Built This City." Shockingly, the Starship sample doesn't even qualify as the album's wussiest. That distinction belongs to DR Period's "Hey Ma (Remix)," which bites The Commodores' "Easy," then adds saccharine female R&B vocals from Toya for extra pop appeal. In true Roc-A-Fella fashion, The Diplomats' debut is shot through with glossy, sped-up retro samples that suggest a soulful version of Alvin And The Chipmunks, but if Diplomatic Immunity is any indication, no beat is too elegant for Cam'ron and his charmless flunkies to screw up. Longer than Nas' Illmatic and Jay-Z's The Blueprint put together, Diplomatic Immunity should prove an endurance test for even the hardiest and least discriminating pop-gangsta rap aficionado.