Parisian hip-hop devotee Laurent Daumail is one of a growing number of French artists updating hip-hop for the chill-out crowd, drawing on the beats'n'samples groundwork of producers such as Rakim, DJ Premier, and Prince Paul and combining it with broad strokes of dub, jazz, and soundtrack ambience. Cam is stylistically closest to Mo'Wax artists such as DJ Shadow and DJ Krush; minimalist, downbeat instrumental hip-hop built from obscure samples and stomp-box turntable accompaniment. His debut, 1994's “Underground Vibes”, was released on the tiny French label Street Jazz, and was followed by a live recording for the Inflammable imprint . Dubbed “Underground Live”, the album featured performed extrapolations of many of the tracks from his debut, as well as a few new and improvised tracks. Now nearly impossible to find, those first two albums were reissued in America by Shadow Records, packaged together as the single-CD priced” Mad Blunted Jazz”. Although Cam's music has found little acceptance in his home country, where racial tension has stratified the hip-hop community into rigid definitions of what the music is--and who should be making it--audiences in the U.K., Japan, and America have begun picking up on his style. In 1996 Cam was featured on, among many others, the sprawling Mo'Wax compilation Headz 2, remixed tracks for such artists as Tek 9 and La Funk Mob, and most recently collaborated on live and in-studio projects with Snooze and DJ Krush . Cam released “Substances” on Inflammable in 1997. The next year, his major-label debut “The Beat Assassinated” appeared on Columbia Records. In 2000, he released a three-volume series named “The Loa Project”. Cam dropped “HoneyMoon”, a smooth mix album that combined jazz and underground Hip Hop, at the close of 2001."Soulshine" was released the following year and featured contributions from Donnie, Larry Blackmon and Guru.

Website www.sonymusic.fr/djcam