By the end of 2003, Jones, Cam, Juelz Santana et al. The quick-and-dirty approximation of “Never Change,” “Heart of the City,” and “Girls, Girls, Girls” that Cam preferred-its samples more mischievously obvious, its seams barely concealed-would help vault him and his partners to stardom.

Speaking-stay with me-of 9/11: In 2001, as Jay-Z was enlisting Kanye West, Just Blaze, and Bink! to polish the soul-sample production style of The Blueprint to a high shine, Cam’ron was finalizing an agreement with his childhood friend Dame Dash that would bring him and the Diplomats to Roc-A-Fella.

Through that process Jones, the least-discussed core member of the group he co-founded, emerges as an auteur of the ordinary, his unfussy writing and uncanny vocals rendering a world just a few degrees off from the one the rest of us inhabit. Diary of a Summer runs the traditional rap blockbuster through that filter, its childhood memories turned oddly urgent, its concessions to emerging styles bent back toward post-9/11 Manhattan. Harlem: Diary of a Summer, Jones’ second album, was released in 2005 as the stranglehold he and the Diplomats had held over New York City was beginning to loosen as New York itself was becoming decentered within hip-hop and as the stylistic hallmarks of Dipset’s early run-deliberately chintzy soul samples, gleefully telegraphed wordplay and onomatopoeia-were being replaced, by competitors but also by the Dips themselves, with bigger, darker, and more industrial elements.

Just shapes and beats till it's over