DJ Cam

Laurent Daumail, known as DJ Cam, was born in Paris in 1973 and began playing music at eight, developing an early love of jazz before discovering hip hop and sampling and trading instruments for turntables. His 1995 debut, Underground Vibes, released on his own Street Jazz Productions label, is frequently cited as one of the first complete instrumental hip hop albums and helped lay the foundations for French trip hop.

He followed with Abstract Manifesto in 1996, later named the ninth best trip hop album of all time by Fact magazine, and released a series of albums blending hip hop, jazz, dub, and ambient influences, including Substances (1996), The Beat Assassinated (1998), and the three-volume Loa Project starting in 2000. He founded the label Inflamable, produced and remixed for artists including Michael Jackson and Miles Davis, and later relocated to Los Angeles, where he's scored music for film and television.