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And Mizzle lead the most surprisingly knowing series of rap skits since De La had jokes. “Get Em Girls” made opera safe for trunks. “Down and Out” both justified chipmunk soul entirely and threatened some sort of misogynist victory lap. Cam’s absurdist wit and impressive ability to coil syllables together are at their height. Purple Haze is simultaneously a refined, perfectly A&R-ed follow-up and one of the most confusing, crude full-lengths ever. Call this a personal project for a relentlessly distant artist an asshole’s lament. He’d already scored his long-predicted commercial smash with 2002’s Come Home With Me, so he was playing with house money. By 2005 Cam’Ron, surrounded by a coterie of modest MCs just turning the corner (Juelz Santana, Jim Jones), was slithering around the Roc-A-Fella Records office trying to avoid dirty looks from Jay-Z. The album that launched a thousand rap blogs. Sometimes competent has gotta trump brilliant. For those who love the Beta Band’s reckless exuberance, Hot Shots II probably smacks of a schizophrenic finally taking his meds, only to lose his edge. There’s some sonic variety, but lead “Squares”-a masterpiece of minimal trip-pop whose strange geometries corset Steve Mason’s wounded drone to heartbreaking effect-is pretty representative of the album’s emotional pitch.
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Unlike the scattershot-brilliant Three EPs or batshit-crazy self-titled joint, the band’s sophomore LP eschews the busier basslines, beats, and samples for a spare set of taut folktronica. That is, when they weren’t screwing the pooch with confounders like “The Beta Band Rap” or “Monolith.” Fans never had it easy, but Hot Shots II, the Scottish prankster’s most consistently good album, made adoring them easier. With a wickedly audacious way around different sounds (psych-rock, funk, hip-hop, breakbeat), the Beta Band not only made music that worked but seemed sublime.