Chamillionaire Aims For Ultimate Victory

  Two years ago, as Southern rap was reaching the zenith of its popularity following the emergence of crunk music and grillz-sporting hustlers like Lil' Jon and Paul Wall, Hakeem "Chamillionaire" Seriki was relatively unknown outside of the bourgeoning Houston hip-hop scene. All that changed after his 2006 major-label debut The Sound of Revenge spawned the hit single "Ridin'" (featuring Krayzie Bone of Bone Thugs-n-Harmony), which netted him a Grammy Award for "Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group" and helped push his album sales to over 4.4 million worldwide. Indeed, the middle of 2006 may forever be remembered within the lexicon of pop culture as the summer where Chamillionaire taught America about "ridin' dirty". "Ridin'" was so popular, in fact, that it caught the attention of satirist "Weird Al" Yankovic, who promptly switched the chorus lyrics "Ridin' Dirty" to "White and Nerdy" and wound up with a top-ten charting single of his own. Proving that success hasn't dampened his sense of humour, Cham publicly endorsed the parody, telling MTV last fall "it's actually very funny if you listen to what [Weird Al is] saying... It surprised me. I didn't know he could rap like that."

  If imitation is the highest form of flattery, then Chamillionaire really had made it; the question that now haunts him as he prepares his sopohomore album Ultimate Victory is whether or not he can seize that momentum and stay on top of the rap game. The omens so far have not been good; when fellow Houston rapper (and childhood friend of Cham) Paul Wall released his second major-label album Get Money, Stay True earlier this year, it peaked at #8 on the charts, selling just under 260,000 copies in its first month of release - a feat that most underground rappers would kill for, but which was seen as a major underachievement for a mainstream artist like Paul Wall, whose previous album, The People's Champ, had debuted at #1 and has since sold over 800,000 copies. And while there's no doubt that Chamillionaire has the talent to avoid repeating Paul Wall's sophomoric fumble, the track record for his upcoming album has been less than encouraging. The single "Not a Criminal" (featuring Kelis) was released on February 13, debuting at a miserable #103 on the Billboard singles chart and promptly falling off the chart entirely by the next week. If Chamillionaire was nervous about meeting expectations before, he must have been sweating bullets after this fiasco. The embarassingly poor performance of the single prompted the 27-year-old rapper and his label to delay the release of Ultimate Victory by six months, to its current release date of September 18, 2007; evidently some parts of the album needed to be reworked, including "Not a Criminal" itself, which will now include verses from Busta Rhymes and Snoop Dogg. In lieu of the album's new release date, a new "first single" has been announced as well: the murder-themed gangster banger "Hip Hop Police," featuring old school Bronx rapper Slick Rick. Other guest artists who have been confirmed for the album are Krayzie Bone, Pimp C, and Lil' Wayne, with several others - including latino comedy-rapper Chingo-Bling and R&B singer Lloyd - rumoured to be making appearances as well. Whether the star-studded supporting cast will be enough to ensure widespread interest in Ultimate Victory remains to be seen, but it's likely going to be up to Cham himself to pen the quality verses needed to stand out from the rest of the pack in a music industry with declining sales.

  Growing up the son of a Muslim father and a Christian mother in a house where "secular music" was banned, Chamillionaire has always sought to write lyrics that expressed his opinions without resorting to the swear words that have become arguably over-used in rap music. While "Hip Hop Police" undoubtedly deals with the themes of gang warfare and police harassment that are the par for the course in mainstream hip-hop these days, Chamillionaire tackles them without using curse words. In an April interview with AllHipHop.com, he declared: "I don't curse nowhere on my whole album, people are not even gonna know it. I guarantee if I don't go out and say it in the media they're not even gonna realize that. People go back and listen to all of my old mixtapes and don't even realize that I wasn't even doing all that type of stuff. I was saying nigga, but I wasn't saying the 'f' word or [the] 'b' word. I was never saying those types of things...I hear that so much and it restricts your creativity and how far it can go." But this doesn't necessarily mean that Ultimate Victory will be free of a "Parental Advisory" sticker, as the various guest vocalists like Snoop Dogg and Lil' Wayne will be writing their own lyrics. The ever-present themes of violence and sex may also irk some straight-laced conservative parents, but they're unlikely to harm the album's overall sales potential.

  When Chamillionaire utters the warning "With so much drama in the industry/Hip Hop Police are listening/Be careful or you'll be history" in his latest single, he's referring to gang violence and murder, but he may also be sounding the alarm with regards to his own career; if he can turn the fortunes around for Ultimate Victory he'll secure his position as one of the reigning kings of Southern Hip-Hop, but if he follows in Paul Wall's footsteps and releases a lackluster second album, his career may well "be history" sooner than he thinks. Here's hoping Cham has a trick or two left up his sleeve.