Cam’ron has been playing the “pause” game for pretty much his entire career, but he admits it’s been getting out of hand as of late – especially on his sports talk show, It Is What It Is.
Talking to Complex about his newfound sports media career in an interview published on Monday (December 11), Killa revealed he’s actually been trying to dial the game down – which involves calling out “pause” whenever anyone says something in his presence that he deems homosexual — but fans keep putting him back up to the challenge.
“Sometimes I try to take it out,” he said of the game. “But as soon as I do somebody’s in the comments like, ‘Yo, that’s crazy, Cam. How you ain’t say pause? That was wild — you ain’t gonna say pause?’ Then I gotta be petty and keep saying this shit because now n-ggas coming at me like I said some wild shit. So to answer your question, I don’t even want to say it that much, but shit done got out of hand, man. Shit, the pause shit has got out of hand, man.”
He continued: “I learned that shit when I was like 12, 13 years old from East Harlem, Jefferson Projects, man. It’s one of them things to stand on your toes like, oh, it’s a joke. You know, people don’t have to get that offended. We have no beef with LGBTQ. Like what I say to that is you can create your own shit.
“N-gga be like, ‘Yo, I’m gonna get some pussy — like, no hetero.’ You could change the game however you want, my n-gga. It’s not subscribed to one particular sexuality. It’s whatever. However you wanna play the game.”
The “pause” typically tends to be used among men who say something that can be interpreted as sexual in regards to another man – like when Fat Joe went viral for saying he likes “Dick from Kansas” while appearing on ESPN during the 2023 NBA Draft.
Though he was referring to Kansas Jayhawks star Gradey Dick who went on to be recruited by the Toronto Raptors, the Bronx rap legend fielded a barrage of jokes both online and in person – but he responded by saying he’s “too old to play the pause game” and is “very confident in who I am.” He also shouted out Cam’ron and Ma$e for “not roasting me yet,” but he spoke too soon.
During an episode of It Is What It Is shortly after, the Harlem duo ribbed Joe for his on-air gaffe.
“The whole thing about it is, Fat Joe didn’t even say whoever’s name it is first — he just said ‘from Kansas,’ so he say he like dick from a specific area or a certain part of the country — pause,” Cam’ron said while laughing hysterically.
“Like lobster from Maine,” Ma$e chimed in, fueling the laughter. “Idaho potato,” Cam added.
“Ayo Joe, listen, we love you,” the Dipset rapper continued. “Once you say you don’t play [the pause game], you play it! If you don’t play, why say you don’t play?! You don’t gotta announce it. And if it didn’t bother you, you ain’t gotta double back and be like, ‘I don’t care. I said I liked Dick from Kansas, that’s a player.’”
Cam’ron and Ma$e both agreed that Joe was “out of pocket” for his comments and questioned why he referred to Gradey Dick by his surname alone, considering the connotations.
Jadakiss also got caught up in the game amid a conversation on The Adam Friedland Show over the summer. In the interview clip, Jadakiss told Friedland that he was “feeling” the way he had his legs crossed, to which the comedic host jokingly said, “Pause.”
This made The LOX rapper go into detail about how Friedland’s usage of “pause” at that moment wasn’t necessary.
“Ain’t no pause,” he said. “We grown men here, we comfortable in our skin. We don’t have to say ‘pause.’ I think only people that’s not comfortable with their self [say it]. ‘Pause’ is for tape recorders.”
Cam’ron edited the clip to include a famous transition from SpongeBob SquarePants where a voice says in a French accent, “A few moments later.”
The video then cuts to Friedland reminding Jadakiss about a video of him in the studio with Rick Ross and Scott Storch, during which the latter was “smoking that big joint,” which prompted Jada to U-turn on his previous comments.
“Pause,” he interjected. “I ain’t even on ‘pause’ time, but that was a ‘pause.’ ‘Cause you did the sign language with it, all of that. That’s definitely a ‘pause.’”
In his caption, Cam’ron called out Jadakiss for his hypocrisy by writing: “Yo @jadakiss you playing ‘PAUSE’ or not? [crying laughing emojis] homie took it to far at the end tho [brown face palm emoji].”