The rap duo is a delicate balance. OutKast staked itself on the player-and-the-poet duality; André and Antwan transcended because each one could animate either side of the split. When Phife Dawg passed away this year, the eulogies rightly pointed out that the five-foot assassin kept Q-Tip tethered to Queens, to Earth. But the duo doesn’t have to be a down-the-middle yin and yang (see: the Ying Yang Twins). Havoc and Prodigy made Mobb Deep great by offering slight variations on the same dead-eyed fatalism. More recently, the Clipse became critical darlings despite Pusha T and Malice trafficking in virtually identical cadences and points of view.
Cam & China, twins from Inglewood and veterans of L.A.’s jerkin’ scene, carry the Mobb/Clipse approach to its natural conclusion. Even among those who share DNA, they’re uniquely attuned to one another, and their minds are melding to make some of the year’s fiercest, most viscerally exciting rap music. Their debut EP is a reintroduction of sorts: At the end of the 2000s, Cam & China—then Cammy and Cece—accounted for two-fifths of the Pink Dollaz, one of jerk’s most exciting acts. The Dollaz were making slick, provocative songs like “I’m Tasty” and accruing fans rapidly. But the group dissolved as the style itself slowed.
Two summers ago, under the new monikers, Cam & China dropped “Do Dat,” a furious warning shot. It came out just a handful of months after YG’s My Krazy Life; where their former jerkin’ peer folded pieces of New Orleans and the Bay into his sound, “Do Dat” sounded as if it had been incubating and mutating strictly in Los Angeles County. And if Still Brazy* *synthesizes decades of West coast rap production, *Cam & China *strips jerkin’ for parts and refashions it into something bolder, heavier, and more menacing.
But first, some misdirection: opener “Extravagant” owes as much to Atlanta as it does to L.A., like if Playaz Circle slinked into 2016 with too much Gucci on. The huge, staccato hook is designed to rattle around in your car and your skull; vocals pan and bunch up and dart across the beat. It’s virtuosic.
The thematic center of the EP is the three-song run that starts with “In My Feelings.” It opens with “It’s about the power of the tongue” and unspools from there; it’s a song about sex that’s really about a slow-burning power struggle. As writers, Cam & China touch on an interesting divide, treating sex as a purely physical venture, but lingering on the more ephemeral parts of romance. So the verses on “Feelings” have you fucking on the floor and in the kitchen, but the airy hook gestures at the sort of mutual attraction that ends up being left unspoken.
A remix of “Run Up,” the duo’s massive local hit from last year, appears here with a new verse from Compton’s AD. It’s lean and kinetic as ever, and shows just how technically adept the twins got in their time out of the spotlight. The layered bridge tacked onto the end bends a Master P “Uuuuhhhhhhhhh!” into a pointed threat that whole high school classes could sing along to. But for all of Cam & China’s threats and sneers, the runaway highlight is the closer, “We Gon Make It,” which grapples with their career aspirations. It teeters between certainty and desperation, the way your ego probably does when you’re sketching out your own five-year plan. The difference is you could never rap this well.
