I'm not a Biter, I'm a Writer

Cam'Ron has a lot of people buzzing after dissing Jay-Z pretty hard this week. I'm not a big fan of the move, because I like both of them, and it's obviously a move done to build interest for Cam's album coming out next month. That said, the thing that really bugged me about it was Cam releasing an attack on Jay-Z backing a refrain made by some ignorant people on the net, which is basically that Jay-Z bites other people's material. This irritates me to no end. When Jay quotes famous lines by BIG or Pac or Slick Rick, he is not "stealing" or "biting" their material and packaging it as his own. Rather, he is paying homage. He is giving tribute to the people that came before him by quoting their lines, like a Tarantino invoking the French New Wave. He knows people know these lines. It's not like he's stealing lines written on some unknown mixtape. So Cam's completely wrong on that front, and I hope Jay doesn't feel the need to defend himself.