CAMRON INTERVIEW

Cam’ron isn’t a stranger to bending a rule or two, hence his album title Crime Pays.

“The reason I named it Crime Pays … I’m not sitting around boasting or anything, but there’s a way to get around everything in the system,” he rationalized recently. “My favorite instance in particular, with me — I went to college and didn’t graduate from high school. I got to college and my coach brought the GED to my room like, ‘Here, you graduated, congratulations.’ Even though it’s a junior college … I never took my SATs coming out of high school. I was playing basketball and this junior college wanted me to come down and play basketball. When I got there, my GED was sitting on the bed waiting for me. I never took a test or anything.”

Navarro College’s current athletic director, Warrick Montgomery, dismissed the rapper’s claims.

“He played basketball. I was here at that time … I was not the athletic director,” Montgomery explained. “I would strongly tell you that that probably didn’t happen. I don’t know how it could happen. Our coaches don’t have access to a complete GED. Like I said, I was not involved, but I would strongly think that didn’t happen.”

Cam’s basketball career ended abruptly due to a hamstring injury, so he went back to New York and got back into rapping. Millions of albums and a legendary crew named the Diplomats later, he now employs people as well as crafts songs.

“To work for me and DukeDaGod — you gotta have a college degree if you want to work for us,” he said. “Neither one of us has a college degree. Well, he does, but I don’t have a high school diploma. So what’s the irony of that? And if you work for us, we’re not hiring you unless you have a degree. And you have to take a drug test. But we don’t have a degree and we smoke weed — it’s irony.”

Crime Pays lands in stores on May 12.