Cam’ron has defended his previously viral interview about snitching and claimed it was heavily edited resulting in him looking “crazy.”
In 2007, the Dipset rapper was interviewed by Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes and said that he would not inform the police if a serial killer was living next door to him.
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He told Cooper instead of telling the police: “I would probably move.”
Cam’ron also claimed that not talking to the police was about “ethics”: “Because with the type of business I’m in, it would definitely hurt my business. And the way that I was raised, I just don’t do that. I was raised differently, not to tell… It’s about business but it’s still also a code of ethics.”
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Now speaking on his sports talk show It Is What It Is, the Harlem native revisited the controversial interview and accused 60 Minutes of misconstruing his point.
Though Cam appeared to stick by his stop snitching stance, the rap legend said NBC “chopped that shit up so bad” and “botched” the final edit.
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He claimed that they left out some added context about how even if you cooperate with authorities, it does not necessarily lead to a conviction: “Now, the people that you told on, you have to go face them everyday [in the neighborhood] … There’s consequences.”
“They didn’t put any of the substance behind the points that I said,” he added.
Hear his comments at the 52:44 mark below.
Back in 2007, Cam’ron was forced to apologized for his 60 Minutes interview after his comments about snitching received significant backlash.
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“Where I come from, once word gets out that you’ve cooperated with the police, that only makes you a bigger target of criminal violence,” he said in a statement.
“That is a dark reality in so many neighborhoods like mine across America. I’m not saying its right, but it’s reality. And it’s not unfounded. There’s a harsh reality around violence and criminal justice in our inner cities.”
He added: “Looking back now, I can see how those comments could be viewed as offensive, especially to those who have suffered their own personal tragedies or to those who put their lives on the line to protect our citizens from crime.
“Please understand that I was expressing my own personal frustration at my own personal circumstances. I in no way was intending to be malicious or harmful. I apologize deeply for this error in judgment.”
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Cam had walked back his no-snitching policy in 2017 when it came to Donald Trump, saying in a video: “Hi, I’m Cam’ron, and where I’m from — the streets — there’s a saying: ‘Snitches get stitches’, but times change. With Donald Trump as president, y’all snitches have a civic-ass responsibility to tell us what he’s up to.”
